Comment by Sarah on October 21, 2009 at 10:16pm

Yeah, um, it's insane!! I truly believe that a lot of it is overkill as well... I've had 3 healthy pregnancies and 3 healthy babies despite their best efforts to find every possible thing wrong with me and my babies.

The last 4-6 weeks are really the worst part though, unfortunately! That is if you make it to term... or are "allowed" to get that far....

Comment by MelissaBL on October 21, 2009 at 10:32pm

LOL. Yeah, Sarah, it does seem like they're looking for something to go wrong. Every time one of them says "I'd like to see you back in [3,4,5] weeks," I've actually started answering "Really?" They think I'm kidding, but seriously... I am glad I planned ahead for this and decided to work only 2 days a week this fall. Sucks for money, but helps for scheduling all of this!

My OB says she'll let me go no further than 38 weeks. She also said that she and the perinatal doc will increase during those 4-6 weeks you mention so that one or the other of them sees me each week, rather than once a month each. I am to the point where I'm out of room on the fridge to display the damn sonogram photos of this child! :) A good complaint to have, I suppose.

Comment by Gerri on October 22, 2009 at 1:17am

Oh my! What a schedule. Can't imagine how anyone could possibly do all that & work full-time.

Comment by Teena on October 22, 2009 at 1:45am

Yikes! hmmm...maybe we can make one day 30 hours instead? Or a month 40 days? LOL So hectic schedules Melissa. But please do take care =)

Comment by Jessica C on October 22, 2009 at 10:52am

Thank you for sharing! I am going to show this to my husband so he knows how much we need to be financially prepared!! He'd like to try soon, I'd like to wait/save up...

Comment by MelissaBL on October 22, 2009 at 12:22pm

Jessica, I pay my 20% office co-pays to see the CDE, endo, chiro, perinatal doc, and eye doc, etc, but the expenses can really come from some of the perinatal procedures and blood tests. The 13 week Downs screening alone, before insurance, costs $1200. Of course, insurance will cover their portion of all of these procedures, generally, but each one is often an additional lab or radiology fee.

My OB (like many OBs) charges a $1000+ global fee at the end of the labor that we can make payments toward throughout the pregnancy, so we just pay around $200 at each monthly visit.

The lamaze classes ran $100 for the two weekends, the anesthesia class was free at my hospital if you signed up for lamaze, and visiting with prospective pediatricians shouldn't cost you anything in most places.

I won't go into how expensive fertility testing and treatment can get, especially since insurance doesn't usually like to cover any of it. If you're lucky, they'll cover underlying medical causes. Ours didn't cover any of the diagnostic tests we went through (which ultimately told us nothing was wrong with us).

Comment by Jessica on November 19, 2009 at 8:44pm

Those were the days! I hope my experience doesn't happen to you (congrats on the baby BTW!), but at the end of things I was driving 1 1/2 hours to my endo every 2 weeks, the perinatologist every 2 weeks, the OB weekly, and having almost weekly sonograms and weekly "laying down to have a machine record the heartbeat" appts (give me a break...it's been 5 years so I don't remember what they're called :)

Although, all the attention was a blessing b/c we did have some complications (6 week premature, but he's healthy now!), so it's all worth it for the monitoring ("not just for BG's anymore").

Comment by Liza Sims on November 20, 2009 at 3:15pm

It does get more frequent, but I have two full photo albums of sonos for each kid, It's like you can watch them grow.lol

Comment by Tifany Kondraciuk on November 20, 2009 at 6:47pm

I had 2 healthy girls now 6 years and 14 months. With my first baby, I only had to see the prenatal doctor every 2 weeks. Then 6 weeks b4 i had her, it was every week. He delivered her 2 weeks early by C section at 10 pounds 15 ounces. When i was pregnant with my second child, I had to go to a prenatal doc and an OB because the prenatal doctor didnt deliver babies. So I was going every other week with the prenatal, and once a month with the OB. Oh then 6 weeks b4 I delivered (had to do this for both babies) I had to go twice a week and get those non fetal stress tests. That is where they monitor the baby's heart rate. Those lasted from a half hour to 1 and 1/2 hours. Then at 37 weeks, i had and amniocentesis to check the lung maturity of the fetus. I had a C-section at 37 weeks and one day she was 11 pounds and 1 ounce. My sugars were in good control for both girls. Good Luck with ur pregnancy Melissa, keep us posted. I am happy for u. :-)

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