Private obstetricians note spike in births among cashed-up couples

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Last year, the service reported 277 births for March and April combined. This year, there have been 348 bookings, an increase of 71 birth bookings for the same period. This number is expected to jump even more in the coming months as women book into the hospital closer to their due date.

Dr Skinner said most of his patients were first- or second-time parents, largely from high socio-economic backgrounds who had secure employment and not reported losing their jobs in the pandemic.

He said a growing number of his patients were also self-insuring and choosing to pay thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs in order to book into a private hospital rather than birthing in a public maternity ward.

“They’ve realised that they are not going to be doing other things like changing their car or job or going on that $10,000 holiday overseas, so they’ve decided to move their chips around on the Monopoly board of life and get a head start on a family,” Dr Skinner said.

“They are partly self-funding because they’ve been caught out without insurance if they have fallen pregnant unexpectedly, and the other thing is people are more concerned due to coronavirus about their health and security so they are deciding to invest more into their health and feel more comfortable giving birth in a private hospital.”

Melbourne obstetrician Dr Saul Cohen said he had also observed a slight increase in private bookings, but said in his experience, some public maternity services had seen a slight decrease in demand. He speculated it was because some people had lost their jobs or were more anxious about their financial security.

“I’ve had one women say that she decided to have a baby because she couldn’t go to Europe,” he said. “I think it’s about people’s ability to weather the storm.”

St Vincent’s Private Hospital said it had not observed a significant increase in births or bookings following the Melbourne lockdowns. A spokeswoman said there had only been a slight increase in bookings for March and April 2021 this year.

Adelaide Shaw is expecting her first child, a baby girl, in two weeks. She was not insured for pregnancy and chose to give birth in the public system.

“The Royal Women’s is known for being one of the best public hospitals in Victoria, so I didn’t see the point in paying out-of-pocket costs,” she said.

After being diagnosed with poly-cystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal disorder causing enlarged ovaries with small cysts on the outer edges, Ms Shaw was advised by her doctor to start a family as soon she could.

The 29-year-old Toorak woman, who works in the pharmaceutical industry, said during the pandemic she has felt less stressed, slept more and ate better: a combination she suspects helped her quickly fall pregnant.

“It might seem a bit strange to get pregnant during a global pandemic, but there were a few factors that played a role,” Ms Shaw, who is booked into the Royal Women’s Hospital, said.

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“Financially we were in a position to do so because we were fortunate enough that the industries we both worked in were not affected and working from home meant we were together more.”

Another perk was being able to hide her morning sickness for 12 weeks and not feel pressure to tell people she was pregnant until she was ready.

Australia’s fertility rate plummeted to its lowest level in more than a century even before the coronavirus pandemic, as couples across the country gave up on the idea to have more children.

Late last year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed the fertility rate – the average number of children had by a woman – dropped to 1.66 in 2019, a decrease of 3 per cent from the previous year.

And while births may be booming in the private healthcare sector, Melbourne’s public hospitals reveal a different story.

Births at Northern Hospital in Epping in the 2019-20 financial year hovered at about 289 births per month, but have plummeted by about 10 per cent so far this year, with an average of 261 births booked in per month for next six months.

At Western Health, which services the city’s rapidly growing western suburbs, including Sunshine, Footscray and St Albans, births are also on the decline. There are 526 births booked in for February this year, compared to 554 births last year, while in March there are 593 births booked in compared to 644 in 2020.

University of Melbourne professor of demography Peter McDonald said the birth rate usually falls nationally during economic recessions.

He said it was important to note there was always a far higher proportion of births in public hospitals.

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“This means the fall in the public hospitals will be much bigger than the rise in private hospitals,” he said.

“It’s a question of delaying births. Primarily, people in periods of economic uncertainty tend to not take actions as important as having a birth they tend to wait to see how things pan out.”

“It’s the people towards the bottom 50 per cent that are affected much more than the top 50 per cent,” he said. “With any kind of economic downturn like that it always affects the lower socioeconomic communities.”

For Mercy Health, which has maternity services at its hospitals in Heidelberg and Werribee, it is business as usual.

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“The birthing suites at Mercy Health’s two campuses during 2020 – Mercy Hospital for Women and Werribee Mercy Hospital – have been extremely busy and on par with recent years,” a spokesman said.

Monash Health, which operates maternity services in Clayton, Dandenong and Casey, however, has bucked the trend with a 6 per cent increase in birth bookings for March and a 10 per cent increase for March to June.

Director of the women’s and newborn program at Monash Health, Associate Professor Ryan Hodges, attributed this swell in birth bookings to expected population growth.

Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital has also recorded a 5 per cent lift in birth bookings for January, February and March this year compared to the same months last year.

The hospital’s director of maternity services, Jenny Ryan, said the rise in the number of bookings was not out of the ordinary, with births often ebbing and flowing each year.