New maternity spaces included under John Hunter Health and Innovation Precinct

My name is Nicole Bennett and I'm the service manager for Maternity and Gynecology services at John Hunter hospital. 

So, a typical day for us in Maternity and Gynecology is we have approximately 11 babies, so some of our women travel quite a distance to access care. 

The thing I love most about my job is the people, everybody that just contributes to making the care that we give to women the best it possibly can be. 

Amazing feeling really and when you see the emotion from the parents it's really hard not to get caught up in their emotion so it's a very special time. 

Our birth suite hasn't seen a huge change since uh it was built in the '90s. 

So I've been involved right from the very first project user a group where we started talking about what does our service currently look like and what potentially will our service look like in the future. 

So it's really exciting to come into such an an open inviting space as the as the new birth suites will be. 

The majority of our birthing rooms will all have um baths in them so we know the importance of water for pain relief and also you know our midwives are trained to facilitate water birth as well. 

It really helps you know that birth process when the surroundings are specifically designed to facilitate calm birth.