Raising kids in Australia can be expensive business and the costs start mounting up from the moment you go into labour, a new survey has found.
The survey, by UK medical journal The Lancet, ranked 14 developed countries based on the cost of childbirth and surprise, surprise we took out the silver medal, coming in closely behind the United States.
Here in Oz you can expect to pay about $8,862.45 for a standard vaginal birth and $13,734 for a caesarean section, and when you take into account a whopping 32 per cent of Aussie women have a C-section – the highest rate among the 14 surveyed countries – that’s a lot of money being handed over to pop out a bub.
Cost in USD.
The reports blames overly cautious medical staff for these expensive bills, with many mums-to-be subject to unnecessary interventions such as caesarean sections and inductions of labour causing maternity care costs to skyrocket. Some mums and newborns can also face complications due to these interventions meaning more money is added to the bill which could have been avoided.
Cost in USD.
As a result this has bumped up the price of maternal and neonatal costs overall.
“Cost increases over time are largely attributed to use of interventions,” the report noted.
However the report also stated maternal and neonatal mortality rates are “very low” in high-labour-cost countries such as Australia.
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