Dear Blasty, Please Be Born In August

I have officially entered what I like to refer to as the "nearing the 3rd trimester freak-out." LOL. The reality of Blasty's arrival is hitting full force and everything is starting to look different and I can't help but feel unprepared. There have been several components to this freak-out and while I think the majority of them have passed, I would not be surprised if something else popped up and kept me going for the ride.

The thing that sparked the freak-out was my second guessing the decision to return to work after Blasty is born. This was something that we figured out very early on in the pregnancy and I stood firm by the decision despite the opinions and comments of others. I told our family in my Week 15 letter:

"I have one particular little birdie in my ear quite often about my decision to return to work after Blasty is born. She has the best of intentions (I believe) in encouraging me to stay at home, but it is becoming a little upsetting because she keeps bringing it up, telling me about the bad side of daycare and emphasizing how I will change my mind when I hold the baby for the first time. Believe me, I always imagined I would be a stay at home mom, so this isn't easy for me but I have to accept it. Dan's company doesn't offer insurance for dependents and mine does. The company pays my entire monthly premium and when the baby is added we will pay a small premium. That is affordable for us, and I feel very lucky to have the good plan that I have with $10 co-pays for all of my visits, ultrasounds, and labs. Even though my entire income will go to the insurance premium and daycare, it is the best solution because we couldn't afford independent insurance premiums and medical bills on Dan's salary alone. So this decision, and having to explain it to people who expect me to stay at home, has been the most difficult one I (and Dan I think) have come across so far! Welcome to parenthood, right?? :)"

Because of our insurance and income situation, the answer seemed clear. Then two weeks ago, a friend casually asked about whether or not I would return to work, and all of the sudden I was on the internet searching for options. I wanted to stay at home. There had to be a way! We made our decision based on the assumption that we would not be able to afford independent insurance premiums, but I never researched what those were. I had no idea what it would cost. I didn't know how to insure a newborn or how I would get back on the state's high risk plan without being wait-listed, but I never even investigated these things. Didn't I owe it to our new family to do the research? That week I became OBSESSED with finding answers. I initially spent an hour looking at the state of Oregon's web site trying to make sense of all of the information before I started crying. It was so overwhelming. Fortunately, a friend gave me the name of an insurance broker and I was able to put all of the research into her hands.

She immediately found out some helpful information for me that put a few pieces of my big, scary insurance puzzle together. We discovered that now that I have group insurance through work, I have portability rights. Therefore, should I lose my job and/or coverage, I am entitled to stay with my insurance company and have several plan choices. This is huge! They can't just drop me and refuse coverage because I have pre-exisiting conditions. WOW~! I never knew it! In fact, the portability rates with my company are far better than the state's high risk pool that I was covered with for several years here in Oregon. Cool!

In the meantime, I met with my boss to discuss my maternity leave. As hard facts were presented, I was disappointed to find out that I will not be able to take as much time as I had hoped (16-18 weeks) but I will at least have 12. Also, coverage for Blasty on my work plan would be much pricier than I thought. Without knowing yet if it was possible, I let her know that I was considering not returning to work. As I told her this, I felt like I was in an alternate reality. I didn't really know if I could stay at home but I was in a real fierce bubble of MAKING IT HAPPEN.

Despite the good news that I could maintain coverage and add a dependent when Blasty was born, the decision still came down to the numbers. While I waited for the broker to get back to me with rates, I started re-working our budget and over-over-over analyzing what to do. I knew without calculating anything yet that staying at home would crunch the life out of our budget and there would be no room for any errors. It seemed a little risky but shouldn't it be worth it? I hemmed and hawed, tugged Dan's ear and then tugged Megan's. Over the weekend, I hit rock bottom. I woke up at 4 a.m. and my mind was racing. I worried, worried, worried. Money. All about money. I cried. Later that day, I crunched the budget again with Dan's input and really looked at our numbers. This is what I should have done in the first place. Sigh. We just don't have enough numbers in our bank account to keep me at home with Blasty. Unless the broker called me up and said, "Surprise! We can cover you and your baby for free!" I cried and cried. Not only did my bubble POP! ...It drenched everything around me. Come Blasty's arrival, our financial situation is changing big time. After painstakingly revising our non-fixed expenses, the numbers leftover STILL didn't add up to much. We are going to be making ends meet on much less than I realized. I felt like SUCH a fool for not facing this reality sooner.

And yet, there is still time to prepare. We still have a few months to gear up and save what we can. I calmed my freak-out by focusing on the silver lining of this cloud: by calling up that broker, we are actually going to save money. She found a better independent insurance rate for Blasty (with the same insurance company, duh) than the one I would pay my company. She will save us $200 a month! Hooray!

But here's the catch, and why I am whispering to Blasty, Please be born in August!

New federal requirements appoint two months out of the year for enrollment for insurance for children under 18. Those months are August and February. This means that if Blasty is born in August, we can have the paperwork submitted ASAP and he will have insurance. If he waits and is born in September, then we can not enroll him until February. How CRAZY is that?! If that happens, we will have to use my company's plan until February. We are going to have to prepare for this scenario just in case.

If Blasty is born in August, he will save his family $1200 in his first 6 months of life. Like, way to go little man!!!

But I can't make him show up on time. So my first lesson learned in my first freak-out of my giant-nearing-the-3rd-trimester-freak-out? There are some things as a parent that we can't control. All we can do is prepare ourselves for the UN-planned. And I feel very fortunate to have a husband and father-to-be that I feel like I can do that with. I think we are a good team. I am very grateful that he was there for me and willing to talk and do whatever I needed to figure this all out.

And he got a little reward for sticking around: first contact with Blasty! In the quiet of the morning on Saturday, I woke up and wiggled across our GIANT bed to snuggle against him. He put his hand on my belly and Blasty gave him a little kick. ;-)