I just found out that our area has not a single birth center.

ClarissaExplainsItAll

I had my heart set on a BC.  I'm really upset.  I do not want to deliver in a hospital and FI does not want me to deliver at home.  Our apartment is literally 2 BLOCKS from the hospital, so if something were to go wrong, we could be there in probably ~a minute.  

 

Anyone done a homebirth?  Does insurance cover it?   

annabelle.27

My area doesn't have one either. From what I understand, birth centres don't usually have any more equipment than what midwives bring to a homebirth. We opted for a homebirth; I was initially against the idea but became comfortable with it after doing some research. My friend, who is an L+D nurse, gave me lots of information- she completely supports homebirth and was actually the one who convinced me to go for it.

I have no idea about insurance- I'm Canadian and midwives and homebirths are covered under our public health system here. 

vintagejjane

You will have to talk to your insurance company about a home birth midwife. Some will cover it, some will not. It depends on your provider and your area. Mine is not covered. We are paying out of pocket. For my home birth midwife it's about 3500, but that includes prenatal and post natal care and delivery.

Tash13

The closest birth center to my house is over an hour with no traffic and I live in urban NY so there's always traffic.  We are having a home birth but DH had to learn a lot about it to become comfortable. I'm partially glad that we don't have a birth center since this is what I wanted from the beginning.

Our insurance will cover our home birth as out-of-network because our CNM is not in-network.  What is covered and what isn't will strongly depend on who you're working with and what insurance you have. 

sschwege

Have you looked into why there are no BC in your area?  I only ask because Chicago (where I live) does not have a single birth center.  The reason being that only CNMs can practice and since pretty much all CNMs here deliver in hospitals that leaves us with no birth centers and if you want a home-birth you either have to find a CNM who does them or find a CPM who is not legally recognized in this state (which I'm sure insurance companies would not pay for).  You might want to look into your state rules if you have not done so already, that might be a way to determine whether you insurance company would even consider it.

judahsmommy1

I don't know if this will help, but this is a quote from my hospital's website regarding home birth.

"Home delivery is another option for low-risk pregnancies. Some women believe home is the most comfortable and natural place to give birth. However, at-home births are not recommended by most doctors because birth can be unpredictable. While this is true, studies of over 500,000 low-risk women who gave birth at home or at the hospital found that there were no differences in infant illness or death. This suggests that there is no advantage to delivering in a hospital for pregnancies at low risk for complications."

If it's important to you, would he be willing to spend some time objectively looking into the possibility of home birth? Maybe if you can spend a little time addressing his main concerns it will become more of an option for him. Everyone has heard the "If she hadn't been in a hospital, she would have died!" stories. If you can find a few, "If they hadn't been in a hospital, she never would have (gotten sick, gotten injured, had this negative birth experience, died)!" stories, maybe he'll start to feel like both are legitimate options. They're definitely out there, they just aren't passed around as much. 

annabelle.27

judahsmommy1:

I don't know if this will help, but this is a quote from my hospital's website regarding home birth.

"Home delivery is another option for low-risk pregnancies. Some women believe home is the most comfortable and natural place to give birth. However, at-home births are not recommended by most doctors because birth can be unpredictable. While this is true, studies of over 500,000 low-risk women who gave birth at home or at the hospital found that there were no differences in infant illness or death. This suggests that there is no advantage to delivering in a hospital for pregnancies at low risk for complications."

 

I am blown away by that. Good for them for stating that.

judahsmommy1

annabelle.27:

judahsmommy1:

I don't know if this will help, but this is a quote from my hospital's website regarding home birth.

"Home delivery is another option for low-risk pregnancies. Some women believe home is the most comfortable and natural place to give birth. However, at-home births are not recommended by most doctors because birth can be unpredictable. While this is true, studies of over 500,000 low-risk women who gave birth at home or at the hospital found that there were no differences in infant illness or death. This suggests that there is no advantage to delivering in a hospital for pregnancies at low risk for complications."

 

I am blown away by that. Good for them for stating that.

I know! It's one of the things that makes me a little more comfortable having this baby in a hospital. My ideal would be a birth center, but we were talking about an out of pocket difference of over $2500, and we just can't absorb that right now.  My plan is that with my third (and final!) baby, I'm saving up first so that I can have the water birth that I've always wanted.

margaret_howell

We will be finding out in a few days how much (if anything) our insurance will cover. Our city doesn't have a birthing center anymore and there aren't any CNM's under our insurance plan. The midwife we met with told us that it's possible, since we don't have a CNM available, that our inurance will cover a CPM as an out-of-network provider. So, that is what we are hoping for. Otherwise she is very flexible with her fee. She can give us a $1000 discount just for having a student (under her supervision) do my prenatal exams.
I do wish that we had decided on a home birth a lot sooner so that we could have some of the money saved up because midwives typically want you to pay the total fee before the birth.
DH wasn't on board at first about a home birth. But now he is completely okay with it. It probably helps that the hospital is just a 5-minute drive if we were to need to transfer. Also, he is very supportive of me wanting to have a natural birth. Neither of us were completely happy with the hospital birth I had. Too much intervening when I would have been better off left alone.
I would suggest you and your FI meeting with a midwife so he can hear what she has to say and ask any questions about things he is uneasy about. Our midwife using a billing company so you could also see if you can submit your insurance information to them to find out about what can be covered (If you can find a midwife who also uses a billing company). I think DH being able to ask questions at our meeting helped eased any hesitancy he had about doing a home birth.

flyer23

Yes, I've done a homebirth, and am planning one for this birth, too. It was covered by insurance, at the out-of-network rate. There are homebirth midwives in my area who are in-network for my insurance, so their services would be fully covered, but I wasn't comfortable with them for other reasons.

Why doesn't your FI want you to deliver at home? I find a lot of people think that delivering at a birth center is somehow safer -- perhaps because the idea that you need to GO somewhere to give birth is so ingrained in our culture. But my midwife delivers at birth centers as well as at home, and she brings the same equipment to each. She says that a birth center birth is just homebirth in someone else's home. The main reason I'd consider a BC is if I lived too far from a hospital to safely transfer, but obviously, that's a non-issue for you.

CurbsideProphet

The closest birth center was over an hour away, so I choose to have a CNM hospital birth.

What are your main concerns with a hospital birth?