Personal Post: Birthing Plans
A lot of things are going on in my life. Not surprising, when I'm 33 weeks pregnant (just four weeks shy of being permitted to labor at any time, interestingly enough) and planning on getting married in 10 days.
But not all of the news is good news.
My insurance is no longer covering the Birth Center, which had been the primary motivator in B and I decided to get married. Later, we found out that my insurance will cover the labor and delivery at the Birth Center's facility, but it won't pay the midwives and it won't pay for any more prenatal visits.
Which, if you know anything about pregnancy, the third trimester prenatal visits are really critical. For most of my pregnancy, I saw the midwives, on average, once every six to eight weeks. But when I hit 31 weeks, they advised me I would be looking at once every two weeks until 37 weeks. In other words, I need increased access to prenatal care, not less. And most OB-GYN practices, if they're worth their weight at all, will not agree to see a woman so late in her pregnancy.
It's a sad state of affairs in our country. I mean, the United States has backed off our usual commitment to AIDS prevention, research and treatment in favor of funding maternal and child health. And California, a state that has one of the largest numbers of pregnant and birthing women, is a classic example of how the birthing process in this country fails.
Keep in mind, I'm on California's pregnancy-specific insurance, which makes it just that much more horrific when you think that these administrative people know exactly who their clients are, and yet are still making decisions that will guarantee they cannot access the services they need for their pregnancy. I mean, you've spent X amount of weeks building a relationship with certain doctors or midwives, planning your birth and becoming comfortable with the given practice's policies and procedures, and then just having the rug pulled out from under you when you're at your most vulnerable is a particularly cruel move.
So, until I actually find myself in labor, I have to receive services at a run-down clinic in Santa Rosa. I've been there before, but it was ages ago, and B's reaction when I told him for the next four to seven weeks I'll be receiving services from them instead of the Birth Center is what leads me to believe it's likely run-down.
I'm scared about how this will effect not only my birth, but the Birth Center as a whole. California only has about five of these types of facilities in the state, and the C-section rate for this area is insane, well over 40 percent at every hospital. And there is no way I can be convinced for our relatively medium-sized community that each of those is absolutely necessary for mother, child or both. Without disparaging the choices other women make, I'm adamantly against having a C-section for myself unless it is the only option for my health or Sephie's.
And the Birth Center is important. Not only does it save the state about $10,000 per birth (because they don't do C-sections, among other things--something our perpetually broken state budget desperately needs) but it empowers women to make their own choices so that they can select the birth they want. Without the Birth Center, every woman in this area will have to choose home birth or hospital birth. When I became pregnant, I knew enough to know I didn't know enough to have a home birth. I also knew I didn't trust hospitals, something that was confirmed in my independent research about the three hospitals in my area.
Getting married to B won't change anything. In fact, once we learned as much, we decided we still wanted to go through with getting married anyway. I'm happy about this, but overshadowing my joy is a legitimate concern--not only for the birth experience I want, but the birth experience I need for Sephie.
But not all of the news is good news.
My insurance is no longer covering the Birth Center, which had been the primary motivator in B and I decided to get married. Later, we found out that my insurance will cover the labor and delivery at the Birth Center's facility, but it won't pay the midwives and it won't pay for any more prenatal visits.
Which, if you know anything about pregnancy, the third trimester prenatal visits are really critical. For most of my pregnancy, I saw the midwives, on average, once every six to eight weeks. But when I hit 31 weeks, they advised me I would be looking at once every two weeks until 37 weeks. In other words, I need increased access to prenatal care, not less. And most OB-GYN practices, if they're worth their weight at all, will not agree to see a woman so late in her pregnancy.
It's a sad state of affairs in our country. I mean, the United States has backed off our usual commitment to AIDS prevention, research and treatment in favor of funding maternal and child health. And California, a state that has one of the largest numbers of pregnant and birthing women, is a classic example of how the birthing process in this country fails.
Keep in mind, I'm on California's pregnancy-specific insurance, which makes it just that much more horrific when you think that these administrative people know exactly who their clients are, and yet are still making decisions that will guarantee they cannot access the services they need for their pregnancy. I mean, you've spent X amount of weeks building a relationship with certain doctors or midwives, planning your birth and becoming comfortable with the given practice's policies and procedures, and then just having the rug pulled out from under you when you're at your most vulnerable is a particularly cruel move.
So, until I actually find myself in labor, I have to receive services at a run-down clinic in Santa Rosa. I've been there before, but it was ages ago, and B's reaction when I told him for the next four to seven weeks I'll be receiving services from them instead of the Birth Center is what leads me to believe it's likely run-down.
I'm scared about how this will effect not only my birth, but the Birth Center as a whole. California only has about five of these types of facilities in the state, and the C-section rate for this area is insane, well over 40 percent at every hospital. And there is no way I can be convinced for our relatively medium-sized community that each of those is absolutely necessary for mother, child or both. Without disparaging the choices other women make, I'm adamantly against having a C-section for myself unless it is the only option for my health or Sephie's.
And the Birth Center is important. Not only does it save the state about $10,000 per birth (because they don't do C-sections, among other things--something our perpetually broken state budget desperately needs) but it empowers women to make their own choices so that they can select the birth they want. Without the Birth Center, every woman in this area will have to choose home birth or hospital birth. When I became pregnant, I knew enough to know I didn't know enough to have a home birth. I also knew I didn't trust hospitals, something that was confirmed in my independent research about the three hospitals in my area.
Getting married to B won't change anything. In fact, once we learned as much, we decided we still wanted to go through with getting married anyway. I'm happy about this, but overshadowing my joy is a legitimate concern--not only for the birth experience I want, but the birth experience I need for Sephie.