I had my first at home. My younger sister was born at home, so I always knew I wanted a home birth if possible, and the women I knew who had given birth in our local hospital had mostly had pretty horrendous experiences with a lot of interventions and "I almost died" stories which left a couple of them with PTSD, so I wanted to avoid hospital if possible.
In the end, it was all very straightforward. I went into labour a few days before my due date. Had my regular Saturday lunch with friends in early labour, went shopping for some last minute baby stuff while I was in town, went home, talked to my mum on the phone, had a nap, and then the contractions started coming closer together. I made some food (using the contractions to time the food - they were every 5 minutes at that point) and watched TV for a bit and called the midwives. I used a TENS machine, but didn't find it made all that much difference and the contractions didn't hurt all that much. Spent quite a lot of time on the phone to the hospital because they couldn't find a midwife, but agreed to send someone round in around an hour. The midwife showed up, I was fully dilated, but the disturbance of her arrival slowed the labour down and I spend ages pushing, but DD was born around 2 hours after the first midwife arrived. Then after everything was cleared away, I had a shower and went to bed with DH and our new baby. It was lovely, and the most straightforward birth of anyone I knew. I'm pretty certain that if I'd gone to hospital my labour would have followed a similar pattern to most of the other first time mothers I knew, with failure to progress,a baby in distress and an emergency caesarian/forceps.
I think that if I'd had the option of a stand alone midwife led unit I might have taken it, but there wasn't one locally at the time, so my choice was between a consultant led unit with very high rates of intervention and a home birth, and the home birth was by far the safest option for me.