Phynna, you're welcome!
I know what you mean, i love this forum for asking those questions you don't really know who else to ask! haha!

As you can tell by Ubba's post, all hospitals are different.
If you are in a small town some hospitals have a very low birth rate (meaning not many babies are born there), so if you're lucky enough - you'll end up with your own room anyway! Like i said, it really is luck of the draw!

I don't know if all public hospitals do this (so if you've had anything else ladies, please correct me), but i've heard a number of women report the same thing - When i was finally at home, the hospital sent a midwife to my house twice just to check how everything was going, make sure i was breastfeeding fine and just having a chat about baby things. It was suuuuchhh a HUGE help, she weighed DD, took blood (this is only because dd had jaundice), checked my stiches (yes embarrasing indeed!) and informed me to the local family clinic (a clinic run my the government, it has midwives there to weigh, talk about BF, Solids when the bub is big enough, give vacinations etc. all for free!). So with that said, you'll find even if you do home home after two days - you're still not alone, most public hospitals send a midwife around home. (I've got a number of friends who had their baby private - and this service has not been offered to them)


As for the centrelink thing, we were given all of our paperwork in hospital, and we filled it out on our own then went into medicare and handed it in there. I really can't remember much about that part, DH was in charge of it. So sorry i'm not much help in regards to that. But i do know they give you heaps of paper work at hospital, including the birth registration paperwork. Maybe you can head in to centrelink some time before bubs is born and get them to fill you in?

wow, i really do ramble on don't i!
Sorry!