Day 150...The dreaded budget

We finally began our budgeting and research into our medical plan to see just how much it'll cost us to have a baby. Mind you, we're only looking at the medical cost of the pregnancy and delivery right now. Once we actually have the baby here, I have no doubt that we'll be able to budget everything just fine. But the cost of medical has thus far eluded me. I'm not very familiar with medical and how it works, so today we decided to research it as best we could.

After mulling over my medical plan, calling my parents for some advice, and posting some questions on whattoexpect.com we have learned the basics of how the medical will work. The funny part was my parents said not to worry too much about the cost of medical because, as they said, chances are I won't have to use my medical too much so it won't cost me that much. Little do they know that I'll be visiting the doctor much more than I usually do, so I'll be putting that medical to full use.

Here's how some people responded to my post on the forums:

-You might consider staying at your job the extra month to keep your benefits for the birth. The medical costs for the first year of the baby's life are going to be big enough, if you can save thousands of dollars by working an extra month, do it.

-first of all you can't afford one no one can ever afford one you just make it work. the medical stuff you can do and personal medical leave instead of quiting that is what i did with my first and then after your medical leave is up you can quit and that way you are covered by your insurance for at least two months. or you can apply for Medicaid which also covers medical bills then it depends on your doctor. you should have at least 13 visits on a perfect pregnancy. but everyone is different and every doctor is different some bill you for every visit and some wait until you have the baby and some have a flat rate. we thought we had it all planned out with our first as well i was working and my husband was working so that was double the income and i wasn't going to quit until 8 months as well. but we also had double the insurance i was placed on bedrest at 3 months so took the personal medical leave which meant i kept my benefits until my time ran up and if i could come back to work i kept my job as well. well i wasn't able to go back to work i was on bedrest until i gave birth. we still had my husband insurance but then he lost his job a month before she was born so we had no insurance and so we had to apply for medicaid which covered the birth of my baby plus her first year of life plus 6 months for me. so here we were without jobs and new baby. we went on WIC and FoodStamps. i went on birth control and got pregnant with my second daughter with a 3 month old and no income. a week after we found out i was pregnant my husband was offered a job.
sorry this is so long but i understand i have been there several times and i had no perfect pregnancy. my first was $24,000 for many stays in the hospital and then my second was $6,000 with a c-section if you have a perfect pregnancy it should only cost about $4,000 and if you have a perfect pregnancy you are usually only in the hospital a day feel free to ask me any questions.

I'm glad that we did the research. As difficult as it was and as frustrating as it was, we at least found out that we will be able to make things work. Our monthly budget will work out perfectly, and we will be able to make the medical bills work (somehow). Most of our plans will just have to play out at this point, but at least we have some foundation for our planning.

Economic decline and it's increased affect on the price of Pickles...oi!