I went private the first time and had no worries whatsoever. This time though we are going with an ob simply because we have moved and our local public hospital now is not so good (know a few people who've had bad experiences there...). I researched my ob and chose one with low intervention and so far so good. I think if you have a good public hospital near you then there's no reason to go private, I wouldn't be if we still lived near the good one.