Sunday, March 27, 2011

Birth

Early Friday morning I got to witness a miracle!! (how's that for an opener??). My sweet friend Lynne, and her husband, James, invited me to attend the birth of their baby girl, Rose. Looooong story short, I have a individual insurance plan with Aetna and in the state of Texas, unless you are under a group insurance plan, you cannot get maternity coverage. In fact, you can't even buy a maternity rider. If Jon and I wanted to have a 2nd while living in Texas, we'd either have to pay around $12K out of pocket to have a baby in a hospital or we could have the baby with a midwife in a birthing center for around $5500.00. We were telling James and Lynne all of this and they thought it would be really good for me to observe a birth with a midwife attending. And let me tell you, it was a privilege and an honor to be there. Watching James coach Lynne in the privacy of their own home was ahhhmazing. Painful and peaceful all at once. I wont go into detail because I want to honor their privacy, but James and Lynne, THANK YOU for inviting me, you two amaze me. And yes, I balled my eyes out. (and almost passed out or puked all at once during one moment but I really think it was because I had been up since 3 am and I hadn't ate anything.)

It reminded me of my birth with Brennan. I always wondered what it would have felt like not to have been loaded to my eyeballs with pitocin.

4 comments:

Jim & Wendy said...

So glad you got to do that, Chaeli! :-)

C said...

Wow, amazing! Maternity insurance is nuts in Texas...I qualified for Medicaid, but my doctor didn't take it, so we paid out of pocket for all my appointments and ultrasounds when we were living there. We would have paid for the birth out of pocket too, but we moved to California 2 months before she was born and found a midwife who took Medi-Cal here:)
I would never personally do a homebirth...I have too many friends who did and had absolutely awful things happen to them or their babies, because if something goes wrong and you're not feet from an OR...well, it's not good.
BUT, if I had a crystal ball and knew everything would be fine, I totally would have. I would have had just Jay and me there, if I could have:)
I had a midwife in a hospital with no pain meds and came home about 24 hours after she was born, so it was a good compromise for me...but yeah, if she hadn't been face-up, she would have been born on the bathroom floor at home guaranteed, and I'm sure everything would have been just fine...but I'm just not willing to take the risk:)
It must have been so amazing to see someone give birth...wow. Incredible.

The Feitl Family said...

Glad you are exploring your options so fill up that four bedroom house :). - Carrie

Lynne said...

We loved having you there, Chaeli! You added so much to Rose's birth, and we were thrilled you came.