Vash the Stampede

I'm Australian and my wife is a Pom. She had PR when we moved to Adelaide.

Our son was born here. We used a public hospital and didn't pay a cent. They also sent us a nice lady who visited every day for a week and took care of the housework. Again, no charge for this.

It was a great experience.

teza

Must be a new thing, I got a nurse that made sure I was coping, if she would've done household work I would've been very surprised as, given as far as I know they are there to assess you can COPE!

Vash the Stampede

This was in 2009. The lady was very nice, took care of vacuuming, washing, ironing, and even gave us a free bag of clothes that her boys had grown out of! She wasn't a nurse, just a sort of 'mother's helper.'

Lisa and Martin

With regard to buying things for the baby I would consider buying things second hand. Babies grow so quickly things often only have a few months of use before they are too small or not suitable any more. Also pre-birth there is a tendency to by lots of gorgeous cute things, whereas after the birth all you want is hardwearing, practical, easy to use things. Talk to someone who's had a baby for a shopping list (or PM me if you're stuck), look on Gumtree and see if there are any Facebook sites covering your area that sell maternity / baby things. I'm in Sydney and we also have monthly baby & kids markets near us where people set up tabletops to sell second hand goods - there might be something similar in your area.