Smiling broadly as she cycles down a busy street, 1950s midwife Jenny can't go further than a few yards without someone shouting a cheery hello.

Viewers of the hit TV drama Call the Midwife would be forgiven for thinking such familiarity and friendliness represents a bygone age long since lost, but it's something with which 2012 midwife Mandy Robotham identifies.

"If I visit Stroud market on a Saturday morning I'm stopped every few paces by someone whose baby I've delivered," she smiles. "Some people would hate it, but I think it's lovely. I wouldn't have it any other way."

Mandy is one of a team of 20 community midwives in Stroud, Gloucestershire, where she also lives, so it's perhaps not surprising that she bumps into women who have once been under her care on a regular basis. It's one of the similarities between her role and that of Jenny, the lead character in Call the Midwife, who is based on Jennifer Worth, the author of the book of the same name on which the series is based.

But while advances in medicine, and in particular equipment, mean Mandy and her colleagues don't need to travel round with a bag of scary-looking instruments in the same way as their 1950s counterparts, some things remain the same.

"I'm one of six midwives on the home birth team, so for me, the experience of going into a family's home to deliver their baby is like Jenny's," says Mandy, 46.

"But that's where the similarity ends. The main thing that struck me from the TV series was that, while the midwives were all very kind and thought they were doing the best for the women, they were very matriarchal and there was a real feeling that midwife knows best. It's not like that any more. We're there to support women and offer them advice based on research and our own experience, but they're under no pressure to follow that advice if they don't want to.

"These days, it's all about choice. Providing there's no medical reason to think otherwise, women can choose to have whatever birth they want, whether it's at home or in hospital or in a midwife-led unit like Stroud Maternity Hospital, where our team is based."

While Stroud is not unique in offering home births, as the Government now wants to encourage more women to eschew hospitals in favour of having their babies at home, the rates of uptake are far higher there than in other parts of the country.

"Nationally, the rate is only one to two per cent, but in Stroud, the figure is ten per cent," explains Mandy.

"There is a real culture of home births in Stroud and women are much more open to it. It's the best part of my job. There's nothing nicer than being welcomed into someone's home and helping them deliver their baby. It still blows me away when there's three people in a room when I enter it and there's four by the time I come to leave. It's come full circle. In the 1950s, it was the norm for women to have their babies at home unless there was medical reason for them to be in hospital, but by the 1970s there had been a complete turnaround and most babies were born in hospital.

"Now we're back to the idea that if the pregnancy has gone smoothly and there's no indication of a problem, there's no reason why a woman shouldn't be at home in familiar surroundings."

Mandy continues: "Wherever a woman chooses to have her baby, the approach today is very hands-off.

"We prefer to stay in the background and let the woman and her birth partner get on with it, being there to offer support when it's needed and allowing the birth to progress naturally. Women instinctively know what's right for them and we simply help to facilitate that as best we can."

Mandy's own story of becoming a midwife is remarkable in that the career path had never entered her head until she gave birth to her own son Harry, now 17, in the unit where she now works.

"I was a journalist, but I had such a wonderful experience when I had Harry that I decided right there and then that this was what I wanted to do," she said.

Harry, his younger brother Finn, and Mandy's husband Simon are all used to the odd hours that midwives inevitably keep. "The boys are used to the fact that Mum works strange hours and might not be there when they get up in the morning."

She adds: "A scene from the programme which really struck a chord with me was when Jenny attended a night birth in someone's home then came out into the daylight.

"It is always strange when people are going about their business and you've just helped to bring another human being into the world. There's no other feeling quite like it."