KellsBells, I see you're going to be in Adelaide soon which is where I live. There are a number of public hospitals where you can have public antenatal / postnatal care depending on where you live. The biggest and most central is the Women's and Children's Hospital in North Adelaide. If you are a public patient then all the costs will be covered by medicare. You will be given the choice to have antenatal care by the Obstetricians or the midwives or even shared care with your GP. If your pregnancy is high risk then you will have to be seen by the doctors predominantly rather than the midwives. You get pretty frequent appointments - 4 weekly I think intially, then 2 weekly and weekly towards the end. You won't be able to choose your carer and will probably see someone different each time. The routine 18 - 20 week scan will be done at the hospital and also covered. For the delivery you will be seen by the doctors on duty - usually registrars - ie doctors who are towards the end of obstetric training - this does not mean they are not real doctors - most have done their 6 years of medicine to be doctors and anywhere from 3 - 7 years obstetric training. There will always be a senior obstetrician on call for any problems. If all goes smoothly you will go through the delivery with 1 midwife - 2 if there's a shift change. If there are no problems you will probably go through the delivery without ever seeing a doctor after you are admitted. But the advantage of public hospitals is that there is always a doctor on duty in the hospital including paediatric doctors if bubs gets in trouble rather than waiting for someone to drive in from home. (again training doctors but at least someone there.) The rooms in delivery are single rooms and in post natal ward - double rooms. I have worked in the area and I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

The advantage of private is that you get to see the same person every appointment and at the delivery but there will be costs involved depending on who it is. You will also need to book quite early to get the person / hospital you want. You can also choose to be a private patient but deliver at a public hospital.

I must admit that if I lived down south I think the ideal option as a private patient would be at Flinders Private Hospital. Flinders private is a beautiful private hospital but is attached to Flinders public. If anything goes wrong the public doctors are right there as well as a neonatal intensive care unit again in case bubs is in trouble. I think you get the best of both worlds there.

Hope this helps with the Adelaide system. Let me know if you want more info.