London's baby guru

The man across the desk looked deep into my eyes. "You have issues with your inner controller," he bizarrely warned me. But this wasn't some New Age seminar, nor a session with a Californian life coach.

Newly pregnant, this was my first meeting at my chosen hospital of birth, the impossibly fashionable St John and St Elizabeth in St John's Wood, with its most sought-after obstetrician, Dr Yehudi Gordon.

"My inner child or my foetus?" I asked. "Your inner child is in conflict with your inner baby." "What can I do?" "Acquiesce," he said. And thus began a sevenmonth relationship with the softly-spoken South African that gave me what I'm convinced was the sort of pain- and angst-free birth that more than justified the £5,500 fee I paid.

And I'm sure, too, that Heather McCartney Mills - who shared Dr Gordon's attentions with me - chose him to deliver baby Beatrice last week because, while others might think he's heavy on the indulgent psychobabble, we expectant mums want Gordon because of his legendary intuition and ability to debunk neurosis.

The first thing he asked me when I entered his consulting room with my fiancé, Martin, was: "Is this the father?" We laughed. "And do you love him?" His manner is both impassive and direct. Within seconds, you find yourself opening up to this father-confessor figure. When I told him of my chronic morning sickness he said: "It is what it is."

Gordon believes the souls of babies choose their parents. When I said my baby hadn't made such a great choice with a non-Earth mother like me, he replied: "On the contrary. It was a very good choice. She could have chosen a starving mother in Africa with Aids."

No wonder his patient list reads like a Roladex of fame. Emma Thompson, who wrote an accolade for his best-selling book Birth and Beyond, Kate Moss, Sadie Frost, Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Jerry Hall and Elle Macpherson all had their babies delivered by Gordon.

As the founder of "John and Lizzie's" birth unit, Gordon prefers to do his Caesarean sections not under the glare of theatre lights, but candlelit, with one light poised on the critical area. A trailblazer in obstetrics - in the Seventies he was one of the architects of the active-birth movement, and in the Eightieshe introduced water births in the UK - Yehudi Gordon's popularity is partly due to the backlash against the rise in the elective-Caesarean "too posh to push" movement. At the St John and St Elizabeth's birth unit, with their wafting aromatherapy oils and two midwives on hand, this is pushing at its poshest. Last year, 69 per cent of deliveries there were natural, active births, while Caesareansection and forceps deliveries were almost half the national average.

Two weeks ago, I gave birth to an 8lb 11oz daughter. Daisy arrived a gruelling 29 hours after my waters broke, following 11 hours of labour. Quite why I was adamant to try a natural birth, when my pain threshold is perilously low, still defeats me. Gordon had written in large letters across my ante-natal notes: " Terrified of giving birth."

In the second trimester, I started having panic attacks about the birth and not being able to find a suitable home. Convinced that my hyperventilation had harmed the baby, Martin marched me to Gordon's consulting room. He listened to my woes, reassured us that the baby would only suffer if I fell into a coma, then took out a prescription pad. He handed me the paper on which he had written "hyperventilation optional".

Although Gordon wasn't present at my daughter's birth - if he had delivered, the bill would have soared beyond £8,000 - he played a crucial role. There were complications with my labour. It took 10 hours for my cervix to dilate and, after seven hours, the midwives were sufficiently concerned to wake him at home at 2am. "Let her continue," was his instruction. I am convinced that anywhere else I would have had a Caesarean at this point. Gordon thought so, too. Daisy was born at 5.59am and when he arrived shortly afterwards, she was lying in her father's arms. In a touching gesture, Gordon lightly touched Martin's cheek and left.

He was amused but not as surprised as I was by my daughter's calm self-containment. She was the only baby on the birth unit not to cry the first night to be held. I went for my post-natal visit the day after the McCartneys' baby was born. "Congratulations for delivering the most famous baby in Britain," I said. "Congratulations to you for having the best-behaved baby in Britain," he replied. "Maybe," he smiled, "beneath your emotional complexity, the core of you is pretty secure after all?"