I have been seeing an excellent OBGYN doctor for the past several months and while I like her, after a lot of research and discussions with people and thinking, I decided I wanted to look more into going to a midwife center. Before anyone freaks out, I am not planning to have this baby at home. Lol. In fact I definitely do not want to do a home birth. It's just not my thing and I know I would be way too nervous to do that.
My thought process about switching will have to be covered in another post since there's a LOT I could say on the subject, but it's not the focus of this post. However, for clarification, the midwife birth center is a center in Pittsburgh, PA, where they have trained Midwife Nurses and RN's whom you see throughout your pregnancy and then you deliver your baby in one of their birth suites on site.
Back to my main story. I started the process of trying to switch to the midwife center about a month ago, and since that time, I have had to get my records of care from my doctor, call the insurance company to figure out what was covered, and finally visit the midwife center to make sure I still wanted to switch after all the craziness! lol.
I had been praying about switching the whole time because I didn't really start looking into them until I was about 25 weeks pregnant and Theresa, the lady whom I've been talking with, said it's trickier to transfer in after 20 weeks. So I was already worried it might not be possible in the end. I was waiting for her to send us the estimated bill, hoping that God would make it very clear that we should switch or that we should stay where we were.
So after lots of emails and phone calls, last week, we received an email which laid out what our bill would be for going to the center. $5700 - due by week 32 of pregnancy - which is in 2 WEEKS! Yeah.....needless to say, I was not happy - and I was definitely not clear on whether or not we should switch! Honestly, I felt overwhelmed about what to do next and did NOT feel like calling any more people!
However, after calling the insurance company myself this time, I got some more clarification on what they would cover, and they assured me the midwife center was included in our plan (Theresa had told me our insurance said they would not recognize part of the bill, but they told me they would). Then I called Theresa back and explained that I did not have 5K sitting around somewhere for this bill and I told her exactly what the insurance told me - which was that they would cover a LOT more of this expense than her estimated bill showed.
Right after calling Theresa, I posted a prayer request in a group I'm part of. Within 20ish minutes, I had received an updated estimated bill from Theresa, and the amount we owed had dropped from $5700 to $1400 - which is obviously much more do-able!
That made my decision MUCH easier, and it was really awesome to see how quickly God worked. I simply needed to continue to pursue this and not give up, but having lots of extra prayers was also key.
I guess I just needed this reminder in my life that God can do all things - we just need to ask and then trust his plan (haha the hardest part, right? ;) )
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| I saw this online and was reminded of how important this is! |
