'Pregnancy is sending me broke, and I haven't even started setting up the nursery.'

When I fell pregnant in September this year, I thought had a pretty good idea of the costs involved with having kids. I've got plenty of mum-friends who would talk about the rising daycare fees, the frequent doctor visits, and the never-ending attempts to entertain school children during the holidays. I knew it was a financial choice on top of a personal one.

What I didn't expect? How expensive simply being pregnant was going to be.

My partner and I didn't get top-tier private health insurance prior to falling pregnant, because we just couldn't afford the monthly cost, especially when factoring in the 12-month waiting period. After polling our friends and family, who all had exceptional experiences, we were happy to choose the public health system for our pregnancy journey and birth.

Maybe I was being naive, but to me, public health in Australia = free.

We talk about our incredible healthcare support, so I assumed that from the get-go, my pregnancy care wouldn't cost me a dime. This was a relief since we had to go through IVF to fall pregnant, and that cost us more than $20,000.

However, I was in for a rude shock.

Watch: Let's talk pregnancy. Post continues after video.

To start with, I had to visit my GP. I feel like every time I go to the GP, the Medicare gap widens. This time? It cost me $65 after the Medicare rebate. There, I got my referral for my dating scan, the first scan in pregnancy, done at seven weeks. After paying $65 for the doctor to just let me go get this scan, I assumed the scan was going to be free. Nope. That was $200 out of pocket, with around $50 back from Medicare.

The costs only increased from there. My hospital wouldn't see me until 16 weeks, which meant another scan and another GP visit for a referral to that scan. I chose to do the NIPT, a screening test for chromosomal abnormalities. This set me back a wild $450, without any Medicare rebate.

Finally, I got to see a midwife at the hospital I'm giving birth at. Surely now, things will be free? Nope, another shock. This time, the 20-week scan. I asked if I could have it done at the hospital, and was told that yes, they do offer this service, but… they are very booked up. This turned out to be correct — their next available slot wasn't until I would be 26 weeks pregnant, far beyond the window where the scan needed to be done. After speaking to other friends who have given birth in the last few years, this seemed to be a common occurrence. The free hospital scans were entirely dependent on being lucky enough to nab a spot.

Given it's a really important scan, I wanted to make sure I went to an imaging centre that does them a lot. I did a lot of research, but the best price I could find, with availability? $420. With a measly $90 back from Medicare. I thought surely this was aggressively high, but after calling several other Sydney-based ultrasound clinics that specialised in women's imaging, I discovered it was actually… cheap.

Now, I'm lucky. While these costs have been a real pinch on the wallet at a time when saving our pennies is front of mind, we have been able to find the funds to pay for all these doctor visits and scans. But if Australia is the 'Lucky Country', and a large factor in that moniker is our supposedly free healthcare system, why has my pregnancy already cost me upwards of $1,000 out of pocket?

There's a lot of talk at the moment about Australia's birth rate. It's been in decline for years, and it's projected to continue in that fashion. We're at a breaking point — think the masses of older Australians putting pressure on society, without the numbers in the younger generations to work and support this. But why would we be inspired to have multiple babies, when even the first 20 weeks of pregnancy is enough to send us broke? 

That's not even accounting for the woeful cost of living crisis we're currently in. It's expensive just to get groceries right now, let alone fund a pregnancy. Then there's the housing crisis, where my partner and I will never be able to afford property close to our friends and family, in Sydney, without a miracle occurring. Plus those rising costs of raising children I talked about before. Every step of the way there is a gut-wrenching cost, and the hits just keep coming. It makes complete sense that Australians are choosing to have children later in life, if at all, just to keep afloat.

Listen to Diary Of A Birth here. Post continues below. 

I don't regret falling pregnant. For all the financial stress it's brought, I'm excited to become a parent. I'm just frustrated. I feel lied to. My whole life, every government has loved to wax lyrical about how stellar our healthcare system is, but in reality, it's been falling into disrepair for decades.

This was finally addressed in 2023 by Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler, during a Melbourne press conference.

"Gap fees have skyrocketed over the last decade: for a standard GP consult, for the first time in the history of Medicare, the average gap fee is now more than the Medicare rebate fee itself," he said.

Yes, you can still find bulk-billing practices, from doctors to ultrasound clinics. But they are few and far between these days, and (in my experience, in Sydney), often come with some pretty terrible reviews that make me less inclined to trust them with what is a really vulnerable, confusing time of life.

During pregnancy, you want to know you're getting the best care possible. I'm not seeing someone for a chest cough I already know is going to require antibiotics. I'm being guided through a completely new experience, and trying to grow life without screwing it up. I want to see my GP, whom I trust. I want to get my crucial ultrasounds done by people who have loads of experience so that nothing is missed.

Medicare is a complicated issue, and I'm not a political reporter. I know it's more complex than "make the rebates more financially supportive" and "ultrasounds in pregnancy should be free". But I think we can all agree that a universal healthcare system that leads to most pregnant Australian people to be forking out hundreds, if not thousands of dollars before they're even halfway through pregnancy is not working. 

Feature Image: Supplied.