"The arrival of our first bub at KEMH"

We chose to go through the public health system to welcome our first bub into the world and, I feel we are fortunate to be in the catchment area for KEMH. Following care from my GP, we started seeing the Midwives at KEMH at around 25 weeks and we managed to get into the MGP program from 30 weeks. We were looked after by a team of two Midwives in MGP5 and were seen by one of these two for most of our appointments which was great and wonderful to know that we would have a familiar face at our birth.

As it turned out I was induced, went through a day of labour and ended up having a caesarean at 1am the following morning. Our 'backup' Midwife was with us for the day shift and then a Midwife from the other half of the MGP5 team was with us for the night. I felt both Midwives gave us excellent care, information, and direction as needed.

We had not met the night Midwife previously but that didn't bother me in the slightest. She was great and so focused when bub's heart rate climbed a little, I did not see her eyes move from the monitoring screen. She was also wonderful at involving my partner, especially from the minute we were going to be heading into theatre until I was moved to ASCU after birth. (This means so much to us that she did this as the day following the birth of our child my partner was stopped from entering the hospital because of an, I felt, ridiculous COVID lockdown rule).

In addition to the wonderful care from MGP5, I felt the team that I saw in MFAU before and after induction, the Anaesthetists for my epidural and caesarean, the Midwives/Nurses in ASCU and the maternity ward Midwives and Doctors were fantastic. I actually had a lot of people look after me during my 4.5 days at KEMH but never felt like I was being hand-balled.

We will definitely be contacting MGP5 if we are lucky enough to fall pregnant again and won't be moving out of the KEMH catchment before then!