u/winenotbeabitch

I’m Canadian so totally free to give birth other than the hospital parking. I was watching an episode of Superstore (set in the US) where Amy gives birth and her insurance doesn’t cover the costs. Someone came into her room before her baby was born asking for payment for the $2,000/night room and then everything else (medications, doctor, etc.) so she ended up giving birth in some free clinic that was portrayed as dirty and the staff were incompetent.

Is that actually how it works - you have to pay before you give birth or do they just mail you a bill after?

And then the main question, what about people who literally DO NOT have money for their hospital bills and no insurance?

I’m pregnant with my second and did an unmedicated birth with my first, which I plan to do again, but am looking for tips on how others managed the pain.

With my first I was physically active throughout pregnancy, did pelvic floor physiotherapy, perineal massage, stretches. Then during labour I used combs in both hands and had my husband doing hip squeezes and I was still unable to mentally calm myself down enough during contractions to slow my breathing and not be screaming bloody murder the entire time.

Curious what helped others?

And to the wise guy who’s itching to comment “epidural”, good advice but no thank you 😂

This may be a dumb question but I’m in Canada, saw midwives with my first pregnancy and again with my second and I’ve never been told “your baby weighs X amount” or “your baby is X percentile”.

The only thing they do is weigh me, and then measure the growth of my belly to make sure baby is growing. But I see all these videos of people saying they were told their baby is X pounds and X oz, sometimes it’s accurate and most of the time it’s not.

Is this just a standard thing in other places or with other care providers? How the heck do they even know without doing an ultrasound to actually measure length and gauge weight?

For me it was why there were regular diapers and swim diapers. I had no idea what the difference was, legit thought it was just a marketing scam.

Wasn’t until we ran out of the swim diapers that we were gifted and I used a regular one in the pool and thought “why the hell is my baby suddenly so heavy” that I figured it out 😂

I’ve always been an anxious person in a sense, very much an over thinker and self proclaimed control freak. I feel way more at ease when I know the who, what, when, where, why, and how of a situation.

I feel like since becoming a mom it’s escalated and I am constantly thinking about hypothetical scenarios (mostly at night) like well what if there’s a fire, how do I get to my kids the quickest or what if when my husbands out of town someone breaks in, what would I do?

Anytime I see a post online about SA or physical abuse at a daycare or by someone at school etc I immediately start spiraling thinking I should just home school.

Is this just my life now? 😅 I know parents always worry but like holy moly is this constant worrying normal?

I do see a therapist, I will be chatting with her about this at our next session, it just hasn’t come up yet as we’ve had plenty of other things to work through lol…