Bombshell, as a new mum, you are entitled to MORE than the usual amount of Plunket visits, and you don't HAVE to go to the clinic. My Plunket nurse in Mt Roskill came to see me for every visit until we moved over to Botany when Em was just over 8 months old. At the time, we only had one car and it was too hard for me to organise to have the car in order to get to the clinic, so my nurse said, "No problem, we will visit you at home." And she did. I just looked in Em's Plunket book and she came to our place four times -- at 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months, and 5 months. At 8 months, we went to the clinic as we had another car by then.

Like I said, you are also entitled to extra visits as a first-time mum -- so we had a 12-month Plunket visit (because there's a big gap between the 8-10 month visit and the 15-month visit) and when we go for Em's 15-month visit this week, I'll make sure to schedule her for an 18-month visit, even though the next one isn't "supposed" to be until 21-24 months.

I'm not sure if you're going to the Pakuranga Clinic or the Howick rooms -- Em had her 12-month visit at the Pakuranga one, and I was really disappointed in the difference between it and the Mt Roskill one. The Pakuranga clinic is in the mall, upstairs, in a quite run-down suite of rooms. I couldn't imagine going to a coffee group there, to be honest. But the nurse we saw (Fleur) was lovely and spent heaps of time with us at the visit, and I didn't feel rushed or degraded at all. But I think it depends on who you get. My former Plunket nurse in Mt Roskill was awesome too, so I was worried about meeting the new one over here -- but I think we got lucky.

I've had a good experience with Plunket too - I think a lot iof it depends on who you get as your visitor.  Mine's great, pretty down-to-earth and seems to really know her stuff, and she still comes to my house which is nice for me.  I go into the local Family Centre to get Ella checked every fortnight too because of her health, and they're lovely in there - very friendly and accomodating.  The one caution I do have about Plunket is that they're 'supposed' to tell you certain things depending on what their current campaigns are - breast is best, back to sleep, always change on the floor... well be realistic, my changetable is much easier, some people's babies refuse to sleep on their backs, and for some people, breastfeeding isn't best at all.  That annoys me, that some of the info they give you is a bit idealistic - sure those campaigns are all for good reason, but there's always exceptions and it's really hard to get info on, say, babies who insist on rolling to sleep, or formula feeding safely. 

If you have a plunket nurse who you're not happy with, can you change your WellChild provider to Karitane, or someone else?  Might be worth thinking about for those with bad experiences of it all. 

When I had my first visit they did all the weighing, measuring, they check hips, eyes ect, they also had a huge questionairre for me to answer, really odd questions, do i feel safe in my own home? does my husband ever abuse me or the baby? really weird stuff, but my plunket nurse was okay, ohh and i got a free pack of stuff, change mats ect.