We recruited participants from three hospitals in
metropolitan Melbourne, Australia, including two large
tertiary sites and a smaller private hospital, a combination
deliberately chosen to reflect the proportion of women choosing public and private care. Compared
with the population of all women giving birth in the
State of Victoria, the women in this study were more
often older (mean age 33.2 years compared with
30.8 years), partnered (96.8% compared with 86.9%),
primiparous (49.8% compared with 42.7%), and less
often born in Australia (67.3% compared with 72.8%).33