Flying home to deliver baby

[Zeenit]

I had my first child at Chelsea Westminster Hospital in the UK on the NHS and it is a very popular birthing hospital. You really should check with the hospital - do you have a permanent UK address? They were very particular about our postal code and where we could deliver.

You need to also have a medical number and registered with a doctor etc etc before they will now allow you to use the NHS for free.

Although we live in a good part of North London, The Chelsea was not part of our area so its never been a option to get admitted to.

Hence The Portland is an option when I needed a hospital.

[QRM]

You can go to the Portland on NHS? Thought it was all private?

[Zeenit]

[quote="QRM"]You can go to the Portland on NHS? Thought it was all private?[/quote

No you cant go to the Portland on the NHS........sorry if thatcame across like that. What I menat was my address only allowed me to go to a no good hospital if I wanted it or private and hence I used The Portland.

[QRM]

So you have a Portland Panda at home too, at least they have a good Alumni

[mules]

3 words for you..... 'have it here!'

i had my first child at the RPA in Sydney in 2006. went in as a private patient and was still not guaranteed a private room. not all rooms there are single as a previous poster suggested. so if you don't have private health cover you have even less chance of getting one. seriously, there is a baby boom in sydney inner west at the moment, so my SIL who had her baby there earlier this year, got sent home twice during her labour and asked to come back when in truly active labour as they simply didn't have a birthing room available.

i had my second child in singapore this year. if you find an opened minded OB you can have a low intervention pregnancy and birth if you desire, similiar to a birthing centre in Australia. The level of care here in Singapore was second to none. Given the choice, I would have it in Singapore again.

Being a private patient in Sydney, my costs for the OB were about 5k. My costs here were less for the OB but had to pay for the hospital. If you have Aust citizenship as you suggest, you could go into the RPA as a public patient, give birth with the midwives (who were fantastic, and i have to say deserved to be paid more than my OB who walked in only for the last 10 minutes), and have a hospital room all covered by medicare. You just have to be comfortable that as a public patient you get whomever is on duty on the day you go in to deliver your child.

if you are thinking of baby bonus in au, you can still get it if you live here provided you plan to return within a given date, but as mentioned above it is means tested anyway come 01 Jan.

Also, have you factored in the costs of flying home to have it? And thought about the potential of your baby coming early?

Good Luck!

[aussiemeg]

Hi

I have scanned this thread and two things I am not sure if they are mentioned are

1. Where were you born. For both Australia and the UK if you were not born in the country but ahve citizenship your child is entitled to citizenship by descent but their child will not have any citizenship rights unless your child attains it through living in the country 3 years. So you probably ahve to decide britain or australia for your grandkids

2. you best get a obgyn here too and explain the situation. Hate to be a downer but I'd go to one of the public hospitals kk or NUH because you will only be using the obgyn here in case of emergency if something goes wrong as they have the best NICU and for scans. You should also put your doc here in touch with your doc in aus or uk.

Congrats on the baby
Megan