I am feeling a combination of dread and rage as I look over Rob's and my health insurance options for the next year. The rules, the restrictions, the buts and excepts and only ifs that pepper the language of these official forms always arouse a dull fear in me--I'm sure that someone is trying to rip me off--but it's worse this year. This year, there's a birth to consider.
For the record, I'm not pregnant yet. (Just like I haven't seen Evil Dead II...yet.) However, Rob and I are seriously considering putting me at serious risk for pregnancy. That is, we're thinking about not using any birth control and seeing what happens. (The last time we did this, I ended up with a big belly and then a baby, so we're pretty sure that's how it works. [Although, really, I'm not entirely convinced. I mean, what about all those times I had sex and there wasn't a baby? What about all those times you had sex and there wasn't a baby?]) The thing making me insane right now is how few choices I have with respect to prenatal care and birth if I want insurance to cover any of it. I'm not intending to start a pro-life vs. pro-choice debate here, but my prospective insurance company would rather I have an abortion than a home birth.
I'll happily say that I am pro-home birth--for myself, and for anyone who wants to try it. The hospital is not a place I want to be, especially when I'm feeling vulnerable and possibly (probably, definitely) in pain. I don't judge anyone for delivering in the hospital. I don't judge anyone for wanting to deliver in the hospital. Treat others as they would be treated, I think. It's none of my business what anyone else does. And I say this because there are people who envision militant leagues of pro-home birth mothers trying to force their hippie ways on others. And who knows? Perhaps there are such militant home-birthers somewhere. I'm just not one of them. In fact, a big part of me still can't believe that I had Westley at home without any medication on purpose.
When I think about having another baby, I can't imagine giving birth anywhere but home, barring an emergency, of course. And while I know there are many wonderful and capable midwives in the Seattle area, I cannot imagine anyone I would rather call when I go into labor than the women who helped Westley into the world.
I just keep looking at the insurance information forms and thinking, I want a home birth. I want a home birth. I want a home birth.
And then I stop myself. Becuase isn't the point to have a baby?
Well, yes. In the end, it's about the baby and not the birth. But the birth still matters. A good experience surrounding the birth of a child can make a huge difference in terms of getting a family off to a good start, and a bad birth experience is horrid. And the process of having a baby is a huge deal if for no other reason than unless you're lucky crazy Michelle Duggar, you probably only do it a couple of times. In your life. What else do you do just twice?
It seems ridiculous that by choosing to have a baby at home, by wanting to work with the midwives whose guidance and experience I so trust, I put myself in a position where my health insurance won't help me. Yes, I get it, I get it: insurance companies aren't in it to help people. They're interested in making money. But if making money is the goal, why cover hospital births and not birth center or home births? Why cover doctors but not midwives?
If I pay for my home birth out-of-pocket, which is almost certainly what will happen, that money has to come from somewhere. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, it would come out of our downpayment fund, which isn't growing nearly as quickly as we'd imagined it would. I'm feeling split in two and incredibly guilty. On the one hand, I have an obligation to my family as it currently stands to make sound financial decisions. On the other hand, a second baby is probably also a last baby, and nothing is going to stop me from wanting the birth I want. And yet, borrowing from the housing budget feels like robbing Peter to pay Paul's vagina. Or something.
The thing that sucks the hardest? At the end of the day (well, at the end of September, actually), I still have to choose an insurance plan and sign on the dotted line. A plan that includes in its name words like "Open" and "Choice" and "Access." Right. As long as you see one of these twenty-seven doctors not more than three times a year, and you weren't even thinking about having a baby in the living room.
