Pregnancy: 32nd week

Week 32
May 22 - 28

I am sooooo relieved!  I had my 32 week checkup on Monday (technically in the 31st week), and I got up the nerve to ask my doctor about my concerns. I was originally just going to ask about the pushing positions at this one, but it ended up with me asking about the induction cut-off as well.

For pushing, she told me that as long as I didn't have an epidural or spinal block, I could push in any position I wanted, just as long as the baby was tolerating it. She did tell me though, that when it comes time for delivery, she would feel better about me being in the bed since it'd be more difficult to catch the baby if I were out of it. Okay, I can work with that.

The I asked about the 41-week induction limit and the fact that I'm actually about a week behind what EDD she gave me. She seems really receptive about allowing me to go over so that I can get to the 41 week mark going by my ovulation date. She said we'd talk about it more once she starts doing the cervical checks and determines my progress. But that overall, she prefers to let nature take its course, doesn't induce very often, and that an extra few days beyond her EDD shouldn't be a big deal. She also said her c-section rate is also pretty low for that reason. So those are a few big things I'm glad I asked about.

Oh, and when she was checking the heartbeat, I asked if she could guesstimate the baby's position within the womb at that moment. She thinks the baby is head down, although she did warn that at this point, the baby could still flip flop around. That's okay... I just wanted to know if what I felt yesterday was the butt like I thought. And it was!

Physically, I'm starting to feel huge now. And I'm kinda sad because while I can still fit into one pair of pre-pregnancy jeans, it's now getting harder and harder to button them up. Don't get me wrong, I'm so happy that they've fit me going into my 7th month. But it's just that my 2 pairs of maternity jeans are uncomfortable, so I'll probably be wearing every other bottom I can before I wear the maternity jeans again. For 2 months. It'll be weird not to wear jeans at all for that long. For me anyway.

But now on to a more stressing topic: insurance. When I was laid off in 2010, I lost my health insurance. To add me to DH's insurance at work would be exorbitant, and would continue to be so unless you had a family of over 5, so I looked around at individual plans, hoping to find some that offered maternity benefits. I found a whole 2 plans. So I took the one that had a high $2,000 deductible, and then after that, they'd cover 100%. And now that I'm knocked up, I've been looking into the cost of upgrading into a family plan once the baby's here, and I *think* the plan is that DH will drop his work insurance and come over onto mine, and that his employer will reimburse him up to a certain dollar amount. But the thing is, the deductible on a family plan goes up to $3,500. So now it's looking like we'll be paying that extra $1,500 once the baby's added, instead of thinking that the hospital charges would be free since I've already reached the $2,000 single deductible limit (thanks to my ER visits in March). And it's completely my fault for not thinking it through past having the baby. If I had thought of this back when I was getting the insurance, we would have moved DH over to mine a lot sooner, and since he's had health issues of his own this year, there'd be a pretty good chance that the $3,500 deductible would have already been met, or if not, pretty darn close.

But the one possible bright spot is that for the past few years, DH bought a supplemental insurance plan that covers hospital stays, and it covers what the main insurance doesn't for the entire family. He bought it a few years ago on the advice of a co-worker, and it's pretty cheap per month. So hopefully we'll get some payout off of that.

Insurance sucks. We should just move to Canada.