Moving house twice in four months, heavily pregnant, with a toddler in tow, is not for the faint of heart.
Like many young people wanting a house and kids, Sydney was just too expensive for us. When my husband was offered a job on the Central Coast, we jumped at the opportunity.
According to the 2024 Central Coast social profile report, this region is set to see a significant population boom from 350,000 to 400,000 people by 2041.
With an easy highway commute Sydney, plenty of homes on the market, and sparkling beaches that boast free parking, it sounds like the perfect place to start a family.
But there's a catch.
Gosford public hospital is the only one in the area where women can actually give birth. It has 32 beds, 10 birth suites, and four spare mattresses.
There used to be three birth centres between Sydney and Newcastle: Gosford public, Gosford private, and Wyong public.
In late 2024, midwives were outraged to learn that the "temporary" closure of Wyong's maternity ward (a hangover from COVID) had been made permanent and the birth suites gutted.
Around the same time, Gosford private announced it was shutting down maternity services due to a decrease in people who could afford private health cover for birth.
Since then, community advocates and midwives have been speaking out to try and get the Wyong birth centre reopened, but to no avail. In December 2025, NSW government published a ministerial media release that boasted about the new women's outpatient services included in the $200 million upgrade to Wyong hospital.
While these services enable women to have antenatal appointments closer to home, they do nothing to support women during the actual event of giving birth.
When I reached out to the Central Coast Local Health District for a statement, they said the following: "As our community grows, ensuring people can access the care they need remains a priority. Detailed planning, guided by population growth forecasts and service demand data, shows Gosford hospital is well placed to support the birthing needs of the Central Coast community into the future".
As someone who just gave birth there, I have to disagree.
The day my son was born, I experienced first-hand just how close this system is to crumbling under pressure.
All 32 beds on the ward were full, so I spent the night in the bloodied birth suite, surrounded by the carnage of labour. The bath in the corner was smeared with bodily fluids, my placenta wrapped in a plastic bag by the door.
If you've ever attended a birth, you'll know the distinct scent that lingers long after the bleeding has stopped. It's metallic, earthy; the smell of a woman's body turned inside out and life turned upside down.
With all spare mattresses taken by partners in the same situation as us, my husband slept on the tiny square crash mat that I had laboured on, covered with a spare sheet.
With a sick toddler at home, I was hoping for at least one more night in hospital with my newborn.
An epidural, instrumental delivery, hemorrhage or cesarean would have all required me to spend at least one to five days recovering in hospital.
Because it had been a straightforward birth, I opted to leave, but what if I'd needed to stay? There weren't any beds on the ward, and every birth suite was occupied.
The Central Coast Local Health District must reopen the birth centre at Wyong public hospital. Permanently removing a second birth centre from this enormous and growing region was a bull-headed misstep that will put mothers and babies at risk if not rectified.
More and more young people are choosing to move to the area for affordable housing, many with the view of starting a family.
To maintain that Gosford hospital is coping is desperately naive and short-sighted. As the population of this region expands, birth services must stay ahead of the curve.
And for a government trying to incentivise young people to have babies, not shutting down birth centres might be a good place to start.
