Hi Tash - I've heard of horror stories about this, so I applaud you in trying to do something.

For us, we were in very lovely surroundings. We birthed our boys at St John of God in Berwick. We were given the smaller birthing suite to begin with as there was another woman in labour and she was given priority (which was fine, it was still a lovely room). I was in the birth suite being induced for one day and one night, during which hubbie stayed on a trundle bed.

Once the boys were born and after we spent probably another hour or so in the birth suite we were all move to a private room a little ways away from the maternity section (I never saw or heard any babies during my stay in this room). They put a butterfly sign on the door (which is obviously code for angel baby) and we were kept very private and seperate from maternity. They set my call button to go through to the midwives desk. We could stay pretty much as long as we liked. Given I birthed the boys at 10am we felt we were able to go home at 7pm that night without staying the night. I believe the room had a single bed, but there would not have been a problem either moving to a double room (if one was available) or having the trundle bed again if we decided to stay the night.