What maternity cover to choose?? so confused!

RentDayBlues

Peanut2011 wrote: »

Just to understand you, what was so different in aftercare?? Holles St has very good aftercare. The staff there are very friendly and they could not do any more than they do!



Are you saying that the staff in Holles St are not good enough or will not give the very best care too??

OP, you have been given a lot of advice here and I can see a lot of people think that if you go private you will get the "best care" but I can assure you that is not true.

The only difference is that you will see same consultant each time and you will quite possibly have better meal options! The same consultant option may be what you want so you may have to pay for it but for the two days there are the meals all that important?

As last one mentioned the cost was similar to the new couch, well that is if you can afford the new couch! The money you will spend on private or semi private you can use to get all the stuff you will need for nursery.

You will still have additional cost when the baby is born so you must count that in. It might be 3-4k for the private and then on top of that you will need 2k to get the things for the baby.

If you have the cash to spare than go for it, if not I would suggest go public!

You talk about snobbery regarding the choice to go private but feel justified to jump down my throat about my choice for my child, we can afford it so why not? I don't criticize your choice but find it funny that its always those who go public who criticize the private patients but never the opposite?

As the OP said mount carmel is not an option for her but to answer your question: the public system is over subscribed and understaffed. Nursing staff don't always have sufficient time to spend with each new mother, in mount carmel there was always a nurse on call and i never felt rushed.

Peanut2011

RentDayBlues wrote: »

You talk about snobbery regarding the choice to go private but feel justified to jump down my throat about my choice for my child, we can afford it so why not?

Just to answer your point, OP was asking about the which way to go and had expressed that they have been through IVF. As you can imagine that is very expensive and stating that "best care" is something that you have to pay additional €3+k, for someone who may not be in a position to do so is not really fair on the person.

As I have said to OP, if it's something they can afford than it why not, however all I was saying is that public care is just as good.

Most people I know would get them selves in debt just to go private so they could say they had the baby private, nothing to do with the care.

ted1

I'd recommend going public and getting on a mid wife led scheme, we found it much better than going private or public. You get timed appointments and when you do gave your baby provided all went well your home within 24 hours and then get daily visits by aid wife.

I believe the dominio scheme is pretty good to.

Moonbeam

They will not allow anyone that is in anyway high risk on to the midwife led scheme.
Once it is not your 1st baby and all goes well it is pretty easy to get home within 24 hours .
The home visits are only for people in certain areas,most areas do not qualify.

I would love a proper midwife led system over here that was available to everyone ,it would be so much more relaxing.

lazygal

A lot of women are not eligible for midwife care due to risks or even distance from hospital.

I went and am going private. I wanted a specific consultant, I didn't want to be shunted around in the public system and I wanted a private room. My consultant was brilliant, and delivered my baby. I got a private room for five nights, and never had to share my ensuite, apart from visitors using the loo. I am not good at sharing close personal space with people I don't know and the money was very well spent for us.

I can only go on my experience and that of the mothers I know, and based on what they've told me I feel I got better care in the private system. I'm not going to dress it up and say private or public is the same, because its not. You're paying for more options and a higher level of personal care - both from consultant and nursing staff.

If we couldn't afford it, I'd suck it up and go public. But having had private care first time around I wouldn't be that happy to have to go through what I've been told about the public system.

Hello Lady!

Thanks for all your advice and opinions everyone.

I think the midwife schemes are great, but they wouldn't be suitable for us for a few reasons - distance from hospital, IVF pregnancy and higher risk pregnancy.

We have decided to go semi-private at the Rotunda. The crazy thing is, we were thinking we might stretch to private care, but the first available appointment with any of our preferred consultants was the end of June! So then we thought, right consultant led semi-private....first available appointment? Mid July! So last option standard semi-private, and surprisingly the first appointment is in 2 weeks!

I was initially a bit disappointed as I would prefer the same consultant. Then today we discovered we are indeed expecting twins! So I rang to see if this changes anything. I was told that I would be under the care of the twin team, who I would see on each visit, there are only 2 consultants dealing with twin births, and I will be assigned to one and will see him/her at most of my visits. I will have extra check-ups and scans anyway. So as it turns out, consultant led would make no difference to my situation anyway, so that has saved us a further €600 (which we will certainly need with two mouths to feed!)

For us the only difference between semi and fully private will be the private room, and although I would prefer that I can't justify the additional €2000 for that, especially when it will hopefully only be for 2 or 3 days.

Moonbeam

congrats on the twins:))

Merrilady

hello Again Hello Lady

That's great news about the consultants and the hospital, glad it worked out for you.

I'm still researching and chatting to my friends about it

Annabananna

Congrats on the news that you are having twins