It's pretty hard choosing an OB (Obstetrician) when your local GP doesn't know anyone who works from the hospital you have selected & you don't have anyone with past experience who you can ask, let me tell you!
The OB is going to be with you the whole way through your pregnancy, during labour and for a fair amount of time thereafter and you may even choose to go with them again for any future pregnancies so it is really important to find someone you connect with - someone experienced, someone you feel comfortable with, someone with a good reputation etc.
I therefore did my research by doing the following:
1. Went on to my private health insurance provider's website and ran a search of all OBs that are registered with them, who practice with our hospital of choice (North Shore Private - NSP) and participate in their 'Access Gap' scheme (this is a facility where the OB sends their bill directly to the insurance provider rather than you having to pay the bill upfront, sort out the Medicare part and then send the rest on) - I think this narrowed it down to about 3 or 4
2. I then went on to NSP's website to check these Drs still worked there and to read their online profiles and have a nose at their pictures - if they had one! For those of you who are interested to learn a little more about the hospital please feel free to take a look at their website - it's great!
http://www.northshoreprivate.com.au/Maternity/default.aspx
3. I then continued my research by searching each OB's name on various pregnancy/childbirth/parenting forums that are floating around on the web here in Australia to see if anyone had commented - positive or negative - on their services.
The websites I used were as follows:-
- Bub Hub: http://www.bubhub.com.au/community/forums/
- Essential Baby: http://www.essentialbaby.com.au/forums/
4. Finally, I used one of my resources at work - a database of Drs called 'MDA' - to look up each of the Drs and find out when they graduated, their work experience and specialities etc - this tool was recommended to me by a good friend at work and I will be forever in her debt because it was actually this search that found me 'the one'!
I'll skip forward a bit here to say that I ended up choosing Dr Stewart Boyce and the reason I chose him (which may seem a bit silly to those of you who are not as big a believer in fate as I am) was because when I searched him on MDA it turned out that he had previously worked at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford - which is where I was born!!! I knew then & there he had to be 'the one' and I'm pleased to say - looking back - that I'm glad I took this huge leap of faith & chose him because he's brill!
Click here to see his profile on the NSP website:-
http://www.northshoreprivate.com.au/maternity/obstetricians-details.aspx?ID=410
Next stop was to call & hope & pray he was available on my EDD - he was! And his lovely secretary arranged to send out a schedule of costs so we could have a look at it and call back to make an initial consultation if we were happy. These OBs tend to book up really quickly and I had already read on various forums that sometime you can be lucky to book an appointment if you don't book before you are 7 weeks pregnant...!
The schedule arrived and wow - this pregnancy malarkey is expensive - but the costs seemed reasonable compared to others we had seen and you are able to space the paymnent out in a number of instalments so I promptly called back & arranged our first appointment for the following week.
Things started to seem very 'real' at this point - just needed to get a referral letter from a GP first (& Dr Tran was on holiday) - so that was next on my list of things to do!
It was around this point I decided I needed to buy a small diary for my handbag - all these appointments were getting a bit out of control!!!
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