Breanna turned a month old today already. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been that long. On the other hand, it feels so long ago when I think that at this hour a month ago I was in a hospital bed, probably nursing my newborn, with lots of friendly nurses who were there to help at a moment’s notice. I also really miss having three (tasty!) meals and three snacks brought to me every day. Why did I want to come home as soon as possible again? 🙂
Speaking of the hospital – why I love Canada’s health care system even if there are definite drawbacks: I got my bill in the mail recently. I went in on a Sunday morning and gave birth. I then spent the rest of the day in my semi-private room (semi-private means one roommate), and stayed all day Monday and until just past lunch time on Tuesday. As I mentioned, I got three meals a day and three snacks a day so for my particular timeframe I had two breakfasts, three lunches, two suppers, and seven snacks.
How much do we owe the hospital?
Six dollars. Yes. Six. And the only reason we have to pay that is because I requested a phone in my room. Had I chosen to not have a phone, we wouldn’t owe a penny.
I cringe when I hear how much it costs in the U.S. to give birth and stay in a hospital for a couple of days afterwards. Six dollars ROCKS.
And getting back to the beginning of this post, I really need to ask HOW is my baby a month old now? I can’t keep calling her my newborn anymore can I?
My one-month-old baby is sleeping soundly right now and I want so much to go to sleep but I know she’ll wake up in the next 20 minutes or so because she always wakes for a feed, diaper change, and feed again around 11:30 or midnight. She’s been sleeping since 8:30 and I really would have gone to sleep myself but I never expected her to stay asleep this long. Watch, she’ll pull some five-hour trick on me and I won’t benefit at all.
I think I’ll go and at least lie down with my book while I wait.
$6! That’s awesome!
Mine, with my health insurance included, will be $500, for as long as I need to stay (and the hospital I’ll be going to has private rooms for all moms and families). I suppose it balances out, because at the start of a pregnancy, you pay one co-pay (for me, it was $20) and that covers all of your visits during the duration of the pregnancy. Since I’m high risk, I’m in there every other day, it seems! 🙂 But that $500 – we’re saving our pennies for it now!
$6! Geez, the hospital where I birthed my first charged $15/day for phone service. And additional money for television!
(But that was all we had to pay after the initial $20 at the first doctor’s visit. Therein lies the unfairness of the U.S. system.)
This is where I thank the stars above for military health insurance. Sure it sucks from time to time, but I got a nice, HUGE private room with a private bath and shower, cable TV, phone, meals whenever I wanted them, all of the supplies in the bassinet, plus Christmas ‘accessories’ for Jaylen all for NOTHING! Woot! With Jaiden I was still under my dad’s insurance and I paid $48, I think, and that was only because he was retired military (there are co-pays when you retire).
However, had we not had that, it would have been well over $12K for each of them, and I had standard, run-of-the-mill deliveries and short stays. So that compared to your $6 is so unfair! lol
I think my local phone service was included in my last hospital stay (with Jonah), however OHIP only covers a ward room (4 to a room) and there was no way in HECK I was going to share a room with 3 other screaming newborns. My health insurance paid most of my semi-private room, I think I paid about $10/day?
I didn’t pay a cent for any of my prenatal care, not for appointments, the 4 ultrasounds, the 3 hour stay in L&D at 31 weeks for bleeding, nor for any of my postnatal care or lactation support. Canada ROCKS!
That’s awesome Sherry! My insurance definitely sucked. We had to pay almost $3,000 – it took me almost two years to pay it off. I’m hoping next time around we’ll pay less with the new insurance, but anything less than $3,000 is good to me.
Wow!! I thought I had good insurance. I have a one time $40 co-pay for all prenatal care, including ultrasounds and my hospital stay is $250/day with a $1000 maximum.
I think it cost me about the same as that to have Sean, for the phone as well.
Liam was another story, we decided to go privately and I’m not even sure how much it ended up costing throughout the pregnancy and hospital stay.
I think the Australian and Canadian systems are similar in that respect.
Happy one month!!
Wow 6 dollars! It cost us 2000 times more to have Malia. And I’m talking the c-section deliver and subsequent hospitalization. Crazy no?
Wow, we must have good insurance because I had a $15 copay at the beginning of my pregnancy and then all Dr’s visits, specialists visits, ultrasounds (and I had one every month), c-section and hospital stay were all covered in full. I thought we were supposed to pay something but we never got billed!
Still, that’s great. Not everyone in the US has good insurance. I’m sure if we had not had good insurance we would have been in debt!
Wow, I paid nearly 4K out-of-pocket this year for Claire’s prenatal care and birth. Yay.