Exhausted and burnt out, new mum Clare Storr's stay at St Helen's Private Hospital's mother and baby unit came just as she needed it.
With her 10-month-old son Sebby waking up six to seven times a night, she needed help and a rest.
Sebby was born with a rare birth defect called exomphalos, where intestines and other organs develop outside of the abdomen. He spent the first 67 days of his life in a neonatal intensive care unit in Melbourne.
It was an incredibly stressful period for the family, with Sebby almost dying multiple times during his stay.
Things got easier when the Storrs moved back to Hobart, but Sebby's disrupted sleeping led to him and his mother being admitted to St Helen's Private Hospital in 2018.
"Once that got settled within a few days, I sort of realised I had been through a lot in the last year, and so they actually admitted me as a patient for the next couple of weeks so I could get a break and some sort of mental health support as well," Ms Storr said.
"The first few nights, they just let me sleep — and I hadn't done that in possibly a year and a half. And just gave me some time and some help and an extra pair of hands.
"They just let me stop and take a breath rather than just put one foot in front of the other like we'd done to that point."
St Helen's offers a 31-bed inpatient mental health unit, including an alcohol detox program, a range of mental-health-focused day-patient programs and the eight-bed mother and baby unit.
With the help of the facility's midwives and nurses, Sebby stopped associating feeding with sleep, and no longer woke up so frequently during the night.
"It gave us some things that worked, that we used for our second child as well, in terms of techniques and just a bit more confidence to push through in certain situations," she said.
"It definitely helped his sleep going forward. I was quite sad to actually leave."
Future of 'essential service' uncertain
But it is uncertain whether the hospital will be able to help other mothers and newborns in the future, with provider Healthscope saying it is exploring its options "following a review in 2022 of the capital works program required to maintain the building".
"Any decisions or updates regarding St Helen's will be communicated to staff, doctors, patients and the community once they are known," a Healthscope spokesman said.
Healthscope declined to answer if those options included closing or selling the hospital, or to detail the findings of the review.
A health department spokesman said it was "liaising closely with Healthscope and other operators to assess the potential impact on the broader health system of any decision affecting the operation of the facility".
Mental Health Council of Tasmania chief executive Connie Digolis said St Helen's provided "essential services" to Tasmanians.
"We've always viewed the mother and baby unit in particular as one that's really important to have in Tasmania and that it's one that has been accessed both from a public and a private perspective as well," she said.
"It's been the service that new mums and babies are able to access in Tasmania.
"I think it provides a therapeutic, safe space for them and provides an environment of 24-hour care which we can see through research and evidence is of tremendous benefit to mums and babies and the families that are supporting them."
"We can see that services across the sector are pretty well at full capacity, so any loss of services is something that we've always got to consider as having a pretty serious impact."
Ms Digolis said she hoped every option, including other providers taking over or moving to new premises, was being considered to ensure the services offered at St Helen's continued into the future.
"I think we can only assume that all steps are being taken to ensure that there's continuity in service, that we won't see a break in these types of services and supports being available, and all of those plans are being put into place to ensure that's the case," she said.
Ms Storr said she hoped the mother and baby unit continued operating.
"If I'd been in that situation and I hadn't had that, I don't know how we would have coped as well as we have, so I think it's a really important thing to be available for parents," she said.
"It'd be rare to find someone who's been there who wouldn't recommend it … it'd be a real shame. I think it should expand if anything."
