You can go public as a private patient someone will be able to help you out with this. I'm not sure if it's just an admin thing, I would think that it would be but I'm just not sure. It is good to book in asap as they can book out really quickly. All they will do is basically give you an appointment for when you are 12 weeks + to do all the paperwork so it's possible that all the midwives won't know but you will possibly speak with a midwife to make the booking, I think it will depend on who answers the phone. However I may be wrong but I know when I rang they put me through to the midwifery department and that's where I spoke to someone.

HTH