Surprise!

So I found out that we are expecting another baby. I am two months pregnant as of now. It was a huge surprise for the whole family. I really wanted another child but my husband was sure he only wanted one so I was hoping that if we waited a few years he might change his mind. So I guess that our minds were made up for us. This will be our last child. My husband is getting fixed after this baby is born. I am looking forward to having another baby although I have misgivings about having it so close in age to my son. They will be two years apart and I was really hoping for more like a three year gap. Right when my son starts to say no and have full blown tantrums, I will have a newborn. Sounds like fun right?

This time around I have health insurance which is really wonderful. It is such a load off to not have to worry about every test so much and what it cost. I know what everything cost ahead of time. I have picked out a wonderful midwife and will be doing another homebirth. I really enjoyed having my son at home and can't wait to do it again. I will be using Hypnobabies again too. I have so much to do to get ready for this baby but this time it all centers around my son. I have to get him potty trained before the new baby comes. I don't want to do cloth diapers for two children at the same time. I have to get him a big boy bed and get him to sleep in it. Those two things loom large in my head as huge undertakings that I am not looking forward to. I am sure that they will give me lots to write about though!

Birthday presents

Now that I have a child of my own, I find that I am getting more and more invites to other children's birthday parties. I love parties. I love the cake and ice cream, and the food and the other adults chatting away. The thing I do not like is the present issue. In my family, when we invited friends to a party my mom always made it clear that no presents were necessary. She never wanted someone to feel they could not come because of lack of money to buy a present. I got plenty of presents from my relatives and never really noticed the lack of presents from friends. I also was not expected to bring presents to my friends parties.

So the first time my son and I were invited to a party, I did not bring anything. Boy did I feel crunchy. Everyone else brought lavish gifts for this kid and I had nothing. We left right before presents were opened so that no one would notice. On my way home I started thinking though, is the fact that the parent provides cake and ice cream mean that I (as the guest) am obligated to provide a gift? Right at this moment we are doing well with money but at the time my husband (the sole income maker) was unemployed and had been for months. It was just not feasible for us to go and spend even $5 on a gift when we had only enough to pay our bills and not a penny more. So does that mean that I should have just said no to the party? Are birthday parties only for guests who can afford it? I really don't like to talk about our money with people but I also did not want them to think that we were rude.

Honestly at first I thought these parents were rude! Why did they expect everyone to bring their child presents when they were not even related to the child? I did not realize that what my mom and my friends had done was unusual. My friends have set me straight about that issue. None the less, I have decided that for our son's birthday parties, we will request no presents. I don't want anyone to feel the way I did that day, especially with so many losing jobs or hours. For the future though, I have decided that I will give books as presents. I do believe that one can have too many of a lot of things but books are not one of them. Borders has a bargain children book section ($2-5 a book) so I will get some books and stash them away for all of the birthday parties we have yet to go to. This way I am following what culture in this part of the country demands and not breaking my budget at the same time.

Going to the chapel part 2

3. If your heart is not already set on a Church where this is out of the question try to have the reception and wedding at the same place. It will save time and money because you only have to book one space. No worries about timing, limos or traffic. This works well for outdoor weddings.

4. If you would like to be married outdoors, check out your local parks. Many cities rent out the gazebos, cottages, pagodas, ect. for weddings and events for very reasonable prices. Beware of places that schedule events back to back. I have worked in buildings that did this for weddings and events and sometimes events got scheduled too close together and the wedding guests would end up getting kicked out too soon.

5. Shake your family tree and friends down for skilled people to help with the wedding. We had friends take care of our cake (we only paid for the ingredients), be our DJ, and be our officiant. Be sure to check that they really are skilled at the task they are offering though. Our friends were glad to help and looked at it as a wedding gift to us.

6. Consider making your reception a potluck. This may sound strange but for us who had been living together for 2 years, it did not make sense for us to register for more stuff. We did not need anything, so instead we asked that people come with a dish of food. We provided the plates and such and hamburgers and hot dogs. Our family and friends provided the rest. It saved us so much money in catering bills and the food was really wonderful. This is often cheaper for the gusts too.

Going to the chapel

Wedding season is here! I love weddings but it drives me crazy how expensive people can make a simple declaration to spend the rest of your life with someone. If you want a very expensive no holds bared wedding then power to you, but if you are looking for cheap wedding ideas that don't leave you wanting more then you have come to the right place. I had a wonderful wedding that cost about $2000. I had the teared cake, beautiful outdoor landscape, dancing, food, and great pictures. So here is how I did it.

1. The most important thing we did to save money was to have our wedding on a Thursday. Not having the wedding on the weekend saved us so much money. It saved on the place we rented, the photographer, and the honeymoon. For us even a Friday was considered a hot day. So Saturday, Sunday and Friday were out. Having our wedding on a weekday saved about $50 an hour on the place and about $1000 off of our photographer. Wedding photographers do not usually work weekdays so any work on those days is considered extra. They are willing to make really good deals when they have nothing better to do. Plus the photographer had no other weddings to do that day so we could pressure him to stay for the whole wedding without paying extra.

2. Keep the guest list small. Under 100 people is good, under 50 is even better. Do you really want to entertain all of those people? Here is something that I have learned from listening to so many brides, the more people you have at the wedding the more stressed out you will be and the less you will enjoy your big day. Really, I have met so many ladies that say that if they could do it over again, they would have invited less people. If there are too many people, then the bride and groom spend the whole reception, greeting people and have no time to eat or relax. So do you really need to invite your neighbors, coworkers, old friends you have not spoken to in years? Consider it carefully.

To be continued...

Self Weaning

Many times I have been asked by well meaning relatives "So when are you going to wean your son?" I always reply "I am going to let him self wean". It sounds really simple right? You would think that there would be no heart ache and conflict when you let the child decide to wean on his own but sadly, for me this was not the case. My son is now a year old and he has a very good grasp of how to feed himself and how to drink from a sippy cup. I have no worries about his nutrition. I thought he would wean somewhere around 18 months or so. It came so much sooner then I would have liked.

At around 11 months he started to lose interest. Then after his first birthday I realized that he could not care less if I nursed him at all. One day I went to nurse him and he really was not interested. I told myself "Well, maybe it is phase. He will be more interested tomorrow" Wrong again. It went on like that for a week until I realized, my son did not need my milk anymore. I can not even explain how strange it is that my breasts are back to being just decorative. I am one of those people that likes to feel useful and so it was wonderful that for a while my son really needed me. Now I feel replaceable. I did not feel any of the relief that other moms had described feeling. My husband was really wonderfully supportive. He let me cry on his shoulder and told me that no one can replace me in my sons life. He made me feel much better but sometimes I still get choked up about it.

Then one day my son bumped his head on something and started crying. I picked him up like moms do and held him to chest. He put his head on my shoulder and stopped crying. Now this may seem normal for most kids but my son has never been a snuggler. He always squirms out of my arms when I go in for a kiss or a hug but this time he was snuggling me! Then I remembered how it felt to be held by my mom when I was sad. I always loved being in her arms. It was then that I really understood that a mother really can't be replaced. What a relief!

Love Your OB or Midwife? Hate Them? Let Everyone know!

I came across this survey and thought it was a great idea so I will share it with everyone. As you all know, I am all about being thrifty but part of being thrifty is choosing to spend your money wisely. I find it very frustrating that I can look up the ratings of a new TV but I can't look up the ratings of a doctor or midwife. When it comes to birth, whether you have health insurance or not, you will probably have to spend some money when everything is said and done. So why can't I get a quality review? Well now you can! The Birth Survey lets you look up the ratings for doctors and midwives that other women have rated. I think this is a really great idea but it takes some effort on your behalf so that more doctors and midwifes will be rated. The survey is anonymous and takes about 30 minutes depending on your answers. Did you have a wonderful experience with your doctor or midwife and want to encourage more woman to see them? Or maybe you had an awful experience and want everyone to stay away from that person. Either way let everyone know about it! We (women) as consumers of birth care deserve to know the quality of our caregivers.

High Risk Pregnancy with No Health Insurance

So you just found out that for whatever reason, you have a high risk pregnancy and you have no health insurance. The first thing you should do is look in to getting state insurance. Even if you have already tried, please read what I have to say because you may yet find out that you qualify for something or more then they gave you. I was very blessed with my pregnancy in that I had no complications that came up. I did however discover that the path to getting health insurance from your state is a lot more complicated then the workers that “help” you to get this insurance would make it seem. After the birth of my son (at home) I had post labor hemorrhaging. My midwife took care of it but I did have to go to the hospital to get a blood test done to see if I needed a blood transfusion. It turned out that I did not but what I did get was a nice bill from the hospital for $3300 for the room I stayed in for 2 hours (I should have gotten a lot better service for that price, can you say penthouse?) and a blood test. I also got a phone call from this wonderful lady that worked with the hospital that showed me how to qualify for state insurance to pay for my bill. I live in Washington State so I do not know the universality of my advice but I think that everyone should at least take a look at it.

1. After you have applied to get the state insurance and they deny you or give you a “spend down” pick up the phone and give who ever is in charge of your case a call. Ask them questions! If you were denied, ask by how much, ask if they do spend down amounts (it is like a deductible), ask if you can reapply if your income changes, ask anything that you can think of! I did not do this and paid the price. I was put on a spend down of $4500. This would be nothing for a typical hospital birth but it was a lot of money for me. If you have a high risk pregnancy you really need some insurance so ask. The workers may or may not just tell you these rules. I know the guy I worked with did not tell me anything I did not ask about.
2. Once you have the insurance, it can not be taken away. My husband works a job that pays him by the hour. Some months he gets a lot, some months he gets a little, it just depends. I did not understand that if I could do without a little one month and qualify, that it would not be taken away from me the next month if he made more money. All I would have had to do is have my husband work no overtime one month and reapply. We would have been in and I would not have had to pay for anything else. So if you don’t qualify by just a bit, consider cutting your work hours a little for one month, then reapply.
3. Even if you have just had the baby or are close to having the baby apply or reapply. Don’t wait. In my state you only have 60 days to apply. If you are able to get the insurance for the month of the birth, even if it is past that month, the state will cover all charges that month. It is not like commercial health insurance, it is retro active to the time the coupon is for. Most of the charges you have will have come from the birth itself.
4. Even if you get a spend down reapply if there is any change in your income. Getting your spend down lowered will save you month so it is worth the trouble.
5. If all else fails and you have a big bill on your table call the hospital. My hospital had a woman that was in charge of getting pregnant women and children insurance though the state. It is so great having someone like that (that knows the system) on your side. They are there to help so let them do their job.

I hope this helps someone. Hopefully someday, all of my advice will be obsolete because no one will be without health insurance of some kind but until then good luck! If anyone else has tips (maybe from other state systems) I would love it if you would share them.