this might classify as health? not sure where else to post so figured here is best option...

wife due in October with our first. I'm just trying to get an idea on what kind of bills I should expect.

BCBS PPO. already paid $500 deductible + 445 estimated costs to the OBGYN. they are holding it as a credit right now.

guessing I will get separate bills from the hospital. I think my max out of pocket is close to $2000.

any input appreciated. I'm stubborn and avoid Dr. except for checkup and near death events.

Congrats. We had our first last Dec.

Hospital ran about 6k. W/O the doc.

But I'm working as a contractor for the army so my insurance is crap.

Luckily my wife has worked with the OB so he didn't charge us.

Wife was in the hospital 3 days (1 before/2 after)
C-section.
7 nights in NICU for little one.

$0

BCBS PPO the fees they took as a deposit only cover the mother. The baby has a different P/O (for lack of a better term).

2k would be highly unusual though unless there is NICU involved or your deductible is sky high. I would think in the range of $1000 out of pocket over a deductible all together.

You'll get a bill for every type of doctor involved. So if she gets an epidural, there will be a bill for the anesthesiologist. If an x-ray or ultra-sound is needed, you will get another bill from the radiologist.
As mentioned above, there will be separate charges for the baby's stay at the hospital.
Hospitals will nickel and dime you. If you take a bowl to keep ice chips in, they will charge you for it.

Make sure you know what the insurance will and will not cover, and at what percentages. When you get your bills, verify they charged you at the correct rate, and challenge them if you think they didn't. Sometimes it gets mis-categorized, and they need to resubmit with the insurance. Some insurances have a policy of auto-rejecting the first submission. This happened when our son was born. It was very annoying, because I had to call for every single bill. They figure some people are too lazy to know their coverage and won't challenge them, and pay the bill themselves.

Finally, when you are sure they charged the right amount, you can still get them to work down the amount you owe. Some places will offer various financing options, and if you keep refusing those, they will often offer a deeply discounted amount if you pay right then.

My son cost us $30k. You can bet I'll be letting him know that from time to time as he gets older.

my son was about 25K after the smoke cleared.

his eagerness to get out into the world and NICU bill accounted for most of it.

If he was going to come early the little bastage could have come a day earlier and saved us on our taxes for 2 years...

Around $3k out of pocket for delivery/hospital. After that, about $30-50 week for diapers, $30-50 week for formula, $600-$900/month for daycare.

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My son cost us $30k

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And worth every penny, I'm sure. I've got two kids and I don't know what they cost us. I just know I can't afford another.

2 day hospital stay for me, midwife and nurse care, 5 day NICU stay for baby all=0 out of pocket for us. Just depends on your coverage.

However I must warn you that even if the birth was free, the kiddos do get a little more expensive after that . All worth it though!

Hospital charges were the cheap part for us.. 185 days in the NICU for the twins and it only cost $100 co-pay each kid..

..then I got them home and had to pay for special formula and 18-20 diapers a day!

..then a few months later we found about surprise #3 and now have 3 in diapers with no end in sight!

Cloth diapers and nursing=huge $$ savers. Even if you invest in an expensive pump it more than pays for itself. Not an option for everyone but highly recommend if it is in your case.

I'm so glad I bought a Tri bike BEFORE the baby was born.

Never would fly now.

Note to self: tri bike before pregnancy. got it!

This thread is a disappointment. I thought the OP was looking to buy and was just trying to figure out what the market was these days.

2.5 yr old- 3.5K
1 month old - 2.5K still missing a few bills

SWHP

The 2nd kid sleeps during the day and is awake at night, I'm going to see about a refund.

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And worth every penny, I'm sure.

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Absolutely!

Both of ours ended in a section, I think it was $3,500 each. Then there's tubes, then tubes and adnoids on the first one.

Daycare is running a bit over $1300 a month for the two. If I knew we could afford $1300 extra a month before we had kids, we would be in a nicer house and have a nicer car...heh, the things you know, right?

Anyways, 100% worth it and I can't wait until we're setup to have our third (got to wait for the first one to get out of day care).

I'm in China right now and kid #2 costs you two years annual salary...

Ouch!

Cloth diapers $$ savers.


Nursing yes, Cloth diapers no. Energy costs and water costs eat up the savings quickly. It is one of those freakonomic things where people are quick to assume assets have value while cash flow is negligible driver, etc. etc. It's also probable that cloth actually do more harm to the environment now as disposables have gotten much better about their processes.

i wish our preemies would have been good suckers.. pump and bottle was great for about 4 months and then an episode of mastitis killed the dairy and jacked up the budget.

and the cloth diaper services i checked out claimed a ~$100 savings over 2 years but they used 25.5 cents per disposable diaper in their comparison.. which is about a nickel more than we routinely pay for disposable diapers and about double what some of the special's found over the years.. i didn't try to do the math on how much a load of clothes/detergent cost because to even consider cloth it'd be outsourced in this house.. wasn't cheaper for us.

I bought cloth diapers and wash and stuff them myself. They were $12-$20 apiece and I've used most of them for at least 18 months and they're still going strong. These days I do 2 wash loads a week. I go through a $15 bag of diaper detergent every 6-8 weeks and each wash load takes me about 20 minutes of active time to load the machines, unload, and restuff the diapers. We use a range of diapers from pocket diapers to all in ones and snap and Velcro closures. No prefolds and safety pins. I bought relatively expensive ones and they've still paid for themselves-and I can reuse them for my next kid. Our nanny and preschool are both with them but some aren't so it's important to check.

OP, if you (or anyone else) is interested in cloth diapering I'll be glad to share more info. I'm not trying to proselytize the world, but I think a lot of people would be surprised to know how easy and affordable it is. It also doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition. We used disposables for the first few months (though baby #2 will be cloth from day 1). Some families use cloth at home and disposables on the go...lots of options. With twins, I might just use cloth at night initially and disposables through the day. My son used to get bad diaper rash till we switched to a wool nighttime diaper which enabled his skin to "breathe" and avoid overheating.

On nursing, a good double electric pump is pretty much a must for a working mom who wants to continue to nurse, and can easily pay for itself (and may be tax deductible now too) A SAHM can probably get away with a manual pump for occasional use. I returned to full time work after 12 weeks and continued to nurse till my son was 18 months. Along the way I also donated >500 ounces of milk to a mother's milk bank too. Again OP, if your wife is interested in this and wants more info I'm glad to help. I got good advice from my mom friends and am happy to pass it on. I had a bout of mastitis too and it was awful, but I kept up production by nursing only on the good side and pumping the affected one. In the early weeks, formula woul have been easier, but once we found our groove the convenience of never having to pack food for him and knowing I could feed him anytime anywhere was great. And if it turns him into the next Michael Jordan, so much the better

2001,

I may hit you up for some information down the road if that's okay. My husband and I are planning to start trying to start a family at the beginning of next year. I'm interested in cloth diapering and nursing while maintaining a fulltime job, but I don't know anyone personally that has done it. Any advice that you have would be greatly appreciated!

Aggiegirl, I'll be glad to talk to you about all that. You can hit me up at ellentheaggie [at] microsoft's free email service.com.

Kid #1, 2009, SWHP - $360 for all OB charges, $300 for two nights in the hospital, $300 for optional screening at 12w prenatal visit.

Kid #2, 2012, SWHP - $390 for OB office visits, $850 co insurance for delivery, $650 for hospital stay (38 hours), $280 for anesthesiologist, $620 for newborn nursery care (maybe a total of three hours not with me), $300 for neonatologist (after writing letters and countless phone calls to get it covered so I didn't have to pay $1000) to say my 8 lb 12 oz 41 weeker was healthy.

Start saving your pennies!

4 kids
Most expensive was 12k
Cheapest was 8k. No issues with any of them.

Shop around and pay attention. I am
Sure the posts above are sound.

The reason the docs go for c section is that they can charge insurance for a surgery...

We had twins the natural way... If you have a good doc, then push for natural.

Part of the issue with healthcare is that the majority of the medical field are in it for the $$'s now

All 4 of my kids were worth it

Family + memories > money

you can trade a limited edition red ipod for an african baby

+1 on recommendation to consider natural birth, or at least vaginal with epidural. Avoid induction unless medically necessary as it (and any other intervention) increases your risk for further interventions which, among other things, drives up cost. For a low risk birth, consider using a midwife rather than OB. Many reasons I opted for midwife-assisted natural birth (albeit in a major hospital with level III NICU in case of emergency) and given our insurance was going to foot the whole bill regardless, cost wasn't a factor in those choices, but they would have all been cheaper. Again, not going to suggest that those options are right for everyone, but I strongly encourage expectant parents to do their research and make informed choices about the type of care you want. The default is not the only option, and to the extent that cost is a driving factor, the default may not be the cheapest. I'm not saying get poorer care to save money-of all times this is one to spend what you must for the best care you can get. I just suggest thinking carefully about what "best care" means for you and your situation. I do strongly suggest choosing a delivery hospital with a level III NICU. Hopefully you don't need it, but it's reassuring to know its there should need arise.

For what it's worth, I was very pleased with the care I got with my son's birth and when we found out we were expecting again there wasn't even a question, we knew we'd be planning for another natural birth with same midwife and doula at the same hospital.

Edited for autocorrect fails

[This message has been edited by 2001%er (edited 7/22/2012 9:02p).]

thanks for all the advice.

as for market rate, a couple friends of mine said they would give up their 4 year old hellians + $1000 cash considerations at the moment. if anyone knows the market rate I could probably start selling and more than pay for my own kid!

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The reason the docs go for c section is that they can charge insurance for a surgery...

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Sorry, but that's BS.

If docs are doing unnecessary C-sections, it's most likely fear of complications leading to John Edwards et al standing in front of a jury telling them that the baby would be a normal, happy kid if it weren't for the terrible doctor who decided to let mom deliver instead of rushing her to C-section.

I'm all for natural birth if that's your choice. I've never met an OB who I think would do a section for billing purposes.

It's true that (most) doctors don't do c-sections purely for financial reasons. It's also true though that, at least in the metroplex, c section rates are higher in suburban hospitals than at Parkland. This might be partly explained by other factors but the higher rates of private insurance may be one. One of the reasons we chose to deliver at Baylor downtown rather than the suburban hospital 5 minutes from our house was that hospital's nearly 40% c-section rate. I'm not believing that 4 in 10 women who deliver there are not capable of a safe vaginal birth. I'm not saying there aren't situations where a c section is appropriate. There are, and it's good to have that option. But it's troubling to me how many women opt for, and how many OBs are willing to provide, an elective, non-medically indicated surgical birth given the additional risks it poses.

On a related note, my biggest tip for expectant parents is to think carefully about what you want and choose a provider whose judgment you can trust unquestioningly when there is no time to discuss a decision. I trusted my midwife 100% and knew any deviation she called for from my plan was for need and not convenience. I switched to her from a different OB practice in part because I felt that they were only paying lip service to my wishes but were going to try to pressure me into unneeded interventions. They delivered at the suburban hospital I mentioned above.

Same insurance as OP...... our child is 2.5 years old now and we was born in Austin. I believe the true cost of the bills when it was all said and done was about $2,000. Not great but not too bad either. That includes multiple bills as others have mentioned. She was induced so we had 3 nights total in the hospital.

Hope that helps and congratulations.

Ive been told directly by a doctor that c sections are all about controlling the situation and minimizing malpractice suits. Esp bc little snowflake has a statue of limitations of 18 yrs for any lawsuits to be brought against the doctor. Medicine is alot of CYA now a days