25.5 weeks and insurance junk

I only have 100 days left till my due date. WHAAAAAAAT. Holy crud, folks.

I had an OB appointment yesterday. High fives because I finally gained 5 lbs. last month. I've been eating like a horse and I know it. The baby has been demanding more calories. (That is what I'm telling myself..)

She is growing well--right in the middle of the growth percentiles. My other kids started slowing in growth in the last trimester (or just plain stopped growing, in Madelyn's case), so we'll have to keep an eye on that. Turns out my POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) was probably to blame because my circulation goes all haywire. The syndrome also sometimes causes me to have shortness of breath/heart racing when I'm digesting a big meal. It reroutes my blood to my digestive tract--which happens to everyone to a small degree, but this is more pronounced--and my lungs and brain get starved of oxygen. So I feel like I can't breathe and like I'm going to pass out and it's SUPER ANNOYING.

It's also started happening in the middle of the night, when I'm not digesting--I'm just trying to sleep for crying out loud. It's becoming more frequent and I think it's partly because as the baby gets bigger, my uterus squashes my vena cava--starving my lungs and brain of oxygen again. Most women can't lie flat on their backs for that reason, but I'm even having trouble lying on my side now, too. It's ALSO SUPER ANNOYING. Add to that all the mind racing and constant peeing that keeps me up at night anyway and I'm a total zombie.

Anyhoo, there's nothing I can do about it other than hurry up and have this baby. I'm going to aim for 85 days instead of 100. My other kids were born in their 38th week so it's not too far fetched.

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OH. The insurance fiasco I have hinted at the past couple of months.

Even though Mark works in health care, his company (a private practice) doesn't provide insurance for our family. It covers him, but if we were to get on his plan, it would cost us almost $1,000 a month. No thanks. So the kids and I have been on a high deductible, bare bones plan because it was about $750 less than that. At the time I signed up, it had a maternity deductible of $7,500. Totally lame, but at least it was something.

So starting last fall, I started to accumulate all sorts of medical bills. I managed to rack up $4,500 in cardiology claims alone (of which my insurance covered maybe a couple hundred). I knew we'd pretty much be paying cash for the baby, but it was twice the amount I thought it was going to be. About $3,000 for the OB and minimum $3,600 for the hospital. Any complications or extra testing would be more. (And I always have complications and extra testing.)

Then I found out that my insurance company had COMPLETELY DROPPED any maternity coverage, and even if I met my $10,000 regular deductible, they still wouldn't touch anything regarding it, and also my deductible had reset to $0 at the beginning of 2014 anyway.
*cue mental breakdown*

I'd tried signing up for the healthcare marketplace back in October but the website wasn't working, and by the time I tried again in December it still took me several days and several re-starts of my application for everything to submit right. Then I was told I might qualify for Medicaid (!) and submitted that application to the state. I thought it was odd, but went for it anyway. I started dreaming of them reimbursing me for the thousands of dollars I had already paid..... Well, it turns out it was a FLUKE, a glitch in the computer system--they had been telling everyone in my area that they might be eligible for Medicaid. Mark talked to someone who works at the DWS and they got 10,000 applications from our county in one day. So I had to go back to square one because of course we didn't really qualify. It took a few more weeks of frustration and tears before I was finally able to find a new plan that worked.

So now I am on a totally separate plan and paying $244 a month just for me, but get this: a $750.00 maternity deductible!!!!!! It is a new company called Arches Health Plan and it is only in Utah but it is a member owned co-op like a credit union. I feel so blessed to have finally found something, and with the new laws, all insurance companies are required to cover preexisting conditions (like pregnancy), so switching over when I was already 22 weeks along was no problem.

We are still going to be paying on all the cardiology bills I accrued last year, but overall the cost of the pregnancy has gone way way down. So thank you for all your concern and prayers while I figured this out--I really appreciate it!