Our First Baby-Related Doctor Bill

I never got around to blogging about the little ordeal that caused the $464.00 doctor bill so I'll tell you about it now. We made a trip to labor & delivery Saturday, April 25, because of 'decreased fetal movement.' Usually she's very active most hours of the day, especially in the evenings. The Friday night before, we went for Mexican food and got home around 7:30 and watched tv till it was time for bed. I hadn't felt her move at all prior to going to bed but didn't worry too much. I figured she was just taking a ciesta! During the night I was awake from about 1 - 2:30 a.m. and again, I felt nothing that whole time. Usually when I'm awake like that, she is, too. It's like she keeps me company when I have my bouts of insomnia. I fell back asleep and woke up at 6 a.m. I laid there till 7:00 and still no movement. I began poking my belly, shaking it, everything....trying to get her to move. I got up and had 2 glasses of orange juice and some twizzlers thinking the sugar rush might arouse her. We were both poking my belly by this time, to no avail. I finally called my doctor's office around 8:00 and they paged the on-call doctor. She told me to go to the hospital and have them hook her up to a fetal monitor to check things out. By that time it had been about 10-12 hours since I'd felt any movement.

We got to the hospital, headed up to the 4th floor where L&D is, told them I hadn't felt her move since the evening before, and I was in "triage" in less than a minute. The nurse had me lay down on a bed while she was getting the monitors ready (the cords were tangled a bit). A few minutes later, right before she was ready to put them on me...guess what? SHE KICKED! TWO VERY HARD ONES! It was if she were saying, "I'M FINE! LEAVE ME ALONE AND QUIT POKING ME!" lol.... The nurse went ahead and hooked everything up and monitored her for 30 minutes. I had to push a button every time she kicked, which was often. She was back to her active little self. Her heartrate was anywhere from 158-168 and the nurse said everything looked great. Apparently she was just in a deep sleep or something.

Even though it turned out to be nothing, I'm glad we went in and had things checked out. It's better to be safe and paranoid than sorry later. We both felt a huge sense of relief.

The bill we received yesterday said the charges had been submitted to our insurance but they haven't processed it yet, so the balance due on the statement was $0. It'll be interesting to see what portion of the $464 we'll be responsible for. I guess we'll find out in the coming weeks.