whoosh-whoosh, whoosh-whoosh

The most reassuring sound in the world. :)

Just got back from the first appointment. The midwife wasn't sure she'd be able to find the heartbeat since baby is still so little, but she ended up not having any trouble at all! It's just amazing how quickly everything happens. I knew that baby's heart started beating at 21 days, but hearing it is something completely different. I haven't even missed my second period yet! Baby is 6 weeks old (8 weeks gestational). Brain waves can be detected (though, um, I don't know what kind of doctors office checks for that routinely, haha), arms and legs are formed, and our baby has little eyes and ears. 6 weeks.

I knew this appointment would be basically, "Hi, my name is ____, this is our facility, and yep, you're pregnant!" I hadn't intended on making an appointment this early, but after a very long and frustrating two weeks we decided it was best to get the show on the road.

After talking and assessing our finances, we decided to try and find a midwife to "catch the baby" in our own home. Unfortunately it seems things are conspiring against us at the moment. We found out that homebirth is in most cases illegal in Missouri!! It is illegal to have your baby in the comfort of your own home with an assistant. That blew my mind. A law has been passed that will hopefully change that, but it is facing major opposition. You can read about it here: http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/176641.html
and here: http://www.friendsofmomidwives.org/

Certified Nurse Midwives (CNM's) can legally attend homebirths, but the thing about that is that in order to be a CNM you have to be under a physicians guidance and there are no physicians in the KCMO area that allow their midwives to do homebirths because of "liability." The new law would allow Certified Professional Midwives (CPM's or 'lay midwives') attend births legally. It is being attacked from all sides. I can't really express how frustrating this is. If the law makes it past August, we may have some options - but most CPM's have let their licenses expire and won't be certified by February.

We resolved to check out local birthing centers as an acceptable alternative and were again very disappointed. They are all but one associated with hospitals. Obviously that is the safest place for them to be and being near a hospital doesn't bother me - it's just that in order to use the birthing centers, you have to pay them and the hospitals they are affiliated with. We're talking $5000 minimum if you pay up front, all goes well, and you don't use too many boxes of kleenex, and up to $10,000 if you don't pay until the baby comes. That is still not taking any complications into consideration. $10,000 for us to have our baby. What are our options? "Sorry baby, could you stay inside there a little longer until we can raise enough money for you to come out?" We have money saved for our baby, but we were counting on a homebirth (about $850). The extra we have saved was "in case of complications." We never anticipated that a healthy pregnancy would break the bank for us. We decided to forgo maternity insurance because it would have cost $450/month and we knew that a homebirth would be cheaper in the long run. *big sigh*

There is a slightly happy ending - we do have at least two options. There is a birthing center about 30 minutes away in KCK called Sage Femme (http://www.sagefemmekc.org/) that uses midwives and will cost us less than $2000. It is located in an old dormitory at what used to be Central Seminary. I've had experience with them through work at the PRC and like their philosophy. My visit with them today was nice as well. To the right is the room I want to give birth in if I choose them:

Our other option is a midwife who practices in Kansas but lives in MO who does homebirth. She should have her certification by February and is willing to see me at her office until then. The only problem with her being in KS is that they have a silly rule that CPM's have to have a practice - as in a physical location - which means she has to pay rent and thus has to charge us more for her services. In the long run she would cost us $3000 at least. If the Missouri law doesn't go through then we could use her services at guess where? Sage Femme. That means paying her and the birthing center when I could just use Sage Femme only to begin with.

In truth, we may have a third option. It is possible that we qualify for Medicaid. Our savings might get in the way - but our salary qualifies us. If we use Medicaid, we could go anywhere - including the very very nice birthing center attached to Liberty Hospital which is 3 minutes away - and we could still afford to bring a doula along as a personal advocate. Here's the problem though: If we have say, $5000 stored up and can afford to pay for a "normal" birth in a birthing center without assistance, is it ethical to get money from the government (aka the taxpayers) just for the security of being able to afford a cesarean or other life-saving procedures should we need them? On one hand, we will obviously pay back whatever amount we end up using in time with our own taxes. But on the other, I hate that I don't have enough control over where my taxes go right now and I don't want to make others unwillingly pay for my luxury (it would be luxury only if everything went well and we pretty much got away without paying for anything - leaving our savings for other things).

So this is our dilemma. We have some time to solve it though I suppose. In the meantime, I have the sound of our baby's heart. :)