Hi Nicci
Congratulations on two accounts..your pregnancy and moving to Sydney.

We have 3 children and now live in Europe but we are Australian and had our three children in Sydney. Our youngest son born in 1998 was born at the Mater Hospital in Crows Nest and my obstetrician was very good. I had 3 different obstetricians for the three pregnancies and they were all good.

We went through the private hospital system so I don`t have experience with the public hospital system. It depends on your health provider so best to call or contact them and see what you are covered for. I stayed in hospital for 5 days including the day of delivery and they were all normal briths. I am not sure if 5 days is still allowable under health insurance or whether it might be less now.

It is important to organise an Obstetrician soon as bookings are heavy for both them and the private hospitals, if you choose this parth.

First call should be to your health provider to see what you will be covered for.

Good luck and email if anything else I can help with.

Best wishes, Vicki

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Hi,
I moved to Sydney when I was 12 weeks & was panicking about getting the nuchal scan in time. Also I am a high risk pregnancy & had issues in the UK before leaving so was really worried.
I went to a local GP first - you can pick any one. It costs money unless you are covered by insurance but you may not be able to get insurance here, or rather you can get it but they will have a waiting period before you can access many services. Obstretics usually has a year long wait. You can of course pay privately as an individual for things not covered on your insurance but those costs will mount up. A website that compares insurance providers here is www.iselect.com.au
The alternative is the public route, where you pay for certain things like GP costs but not any treatment in a hospital. You should register asap with the Medicare system which means you can get rebates on some costs, even if you have insurance. It sounds compilicated because it is!!
I was worried about going public as there have been some stories about the state of healthcare in NSW but it's the same as the moans about the NHS. I have done some research on the internet & on Australian pregnancy websites & have been reassured that public is likely to be fine (barring the risk that anyone can have a random bad experience public or private). In fact, some believe public can be better as you are guaranteed expert care all hours should something abnormal happen whereas sometimes in private hospitals they don't have as many resources available all the time.
I would recommend starting off with the GP & going public at first then you can always change if you prefer later & there is the option to do it.
Best of luck - I will be 6mths in Jan too but with my first if all continues to go well.
Cheers!

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Hi Nikki
We are more or less in the same position and worried dead lot.
We've mentally prepared ourselves for private health care but someone in the forum reply suggested even public health care is alright.
we will be keen to know how to go about it as the private health care is gonna cost us a lot
hopefully everything shuld go alright for you darling

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