Hospital parking meant mum missed daily cuddles with her premature baby boy

Tuesday, 5 May 2026

Waikato Hospital’s NICU has great staff but terrible parking accessibility, a mother says (file photo).

A Hamilton mother whose son spent weeks in neonatal intensive care says the worst part of the ordeal was the “horrendous” daily search for a park.

Cass Parker said it was a parking problem even before baby Eli was born nearly two months early in 2023 — when her water broke, she ended up walking 20 minutes to Waikato Hospital because there were no closer parks.

She is among many who commented about the issue following a Waikato Times story about about the problem published on Saturday.

Speaking to the Waikato Times on Monday, she said Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora (HNZ) needed to do better on parking, as many patients and family members were struggling.

“I had to walk up to the hospital with my waters leaking because we couldn’t get any closer,” she said.

“I was feeling too stressed out to be alone, so I said to my partner … don’t drop me off and then come back. I need you with me.”

Eli was now doing fantastically well, with barely any sign he spent the first four and a half weeks of his life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

The hospital currently has 1070 public parking spaces and 1482 spaces for staff and contractors, which the health system says is more than any other in the country.

However, for Parker, the search for an available spot was the single most stressful part of her visit to NICU each morning.

Cars line the streets near Waikato Hospital, where staff and public alike struggle to find a park.

“We would be heading up there normally between 7am and 7.30,” she said.

“It was before a lot of the appointments and things, so it was one of the better times to be going and it was still chaos every time.”

There were multiple times when she cried in the parking building while looking for a space, anxious to get to her baby.

The building layout contributed to delays that could reach half an hour or more. Drivers could be forced to travel to the top before turning around, with limited space to manoeuvre.

Parker said timing was critical due to scheduled “cares”, when babies were taken out of incubators for treatment. Missing these could mean missing the only chance to hold a baby that day.

“If we missed his cares, we didn’t really get to cuddle our baby that day,” she said. “It’s really devastating to miss those.”

Recovering from the birth and with stitches, parking off-site and walking was not an easy alternative. The NICU was already one of the furthest points in the hospital from the main car park, taking about 15 minutes to reach.

The NICU staff had been great, and had also been struggling with parking, she said.

The hospital needed better parking arrangements to reduce stress for families who needed frequent access to NICU, or frequent access to another area.

Parker said this approach would better reflect the reality of families returning daily, compared with people attending one-off appointments.

She hoped to raise awareness of the issue so the health system would take action, for example by building another parking building.

The PSA told the Waikato Times last week that construction has made the shortage of parking even worse. The New Zealand Resident Doctors' Association said there was a waitlist of more than two years to register to use staff parking.

HNZ has mixed messaging about the situation. While the hospital website flags parking as an issue and says it is “working at pace to improve this situation”, a national representative said no plans were underway as the hospital had plenty of capacity already.

People who commented about the issue on Facebook painted a picture of a high pressure environment where hunting for parking at or near the hospital was an ongoing battle.

One said their stress was “through the roof” when they were called to an emergency situation and couldn’t find a park while someone’s life hung in the balance.

Missed appointments, sympathy for staff, the risk of cars on the side streets being broken into, and the possibility of an off-site park-n-ride were also mentioned.

One person suggested signs showing capacity so that people did not waste time in the parking building when there were no spaces available.

Many people called for another parking building, while others recommended bus or shuttle options, and one who said people were “car centric” also suggested walking, cycling, scooters and Uber.