Let's Talk About Money
Investing
You will never forget your birth. It is worth investing in up front.
One of the main factors of decision making when choosing a care provider for pregnancy and birth is cost. Many people come to us and want to know whether or not they can afford to hire a midwife. Typically speaking, the entire global fee (one fee for all of your care) for prenatal midwifery care, 24/7 on-call availability from a midwife you know and have relationship with, your birth, and ongoing postpartum care for both mom and baby is less than the cost of an uncomplicated, intervention-free vaginal birth in the hospital, not including prenatal and postpartum care.
In many cases, our entire global fee is actually less than people's insurance deductibles, which means that they would pay less money overall for the entirety of our care than they would for an in-network hospital birth.
One financial benefit to midwifery care is that because we have one global fee for the entirety of our care, our care is motived by the needs of the individual and is not influenced by financial considerations. In a hospital based setting you can expect to pay individually for each service that you receive in addition to a standard birth fee.
According to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2014 (the most recent data we could find), the national median costs of hospital births in the United States were $13,524.00 for maternal care and delivery, with an additional $3,660.00 for newborn care. Due to the continually rising costs of birth in our country, we suspect that these numbers are higher today. According to a Healthcare study conducted for March of Dimes, women delivering in a hospital setting in the United States can expect to pay out of pocket about $3,500.00 for their birth alone and about $8,800.00 for prenatal care, hospital delivery, and postpartum care. If you have any interventions in the hospital setting, or have a cesarean delivery (which happens 31% of the time in planned hospital births) the costs go up even more.
If you have market-place insurance, or are insured by your employer, and are not covered by medicaid then your total up front payment for all of your midwifery care will likely be significantly less than the postpartum bill you will receive after having your baby in a hospital.
Additional financial benefits for midwifery clients, aside from an overall lower cost, include:
being able to make a financial plan with your midwife who you have a personal relationship with;
still having the ability to make payments in all forms (we accept credit cards, debit cards, HSA accounts, and personal loans);
the return on your investment is exponentially greater when you consider the amount of hours your midwives spend with you over the course of your care vs the amount of time you receive with a provider in hospital based care.
For many people, it is a myth that midwifery and homebirth care is going to cost them, the client, a greater amount of actual dollars than receiving hospital based care will. As mentioned above, the inverse is more likely to be true. We think that in a society that spends an average of $25,000.00 on weddings and approximately $1,200.00 per person on vacation per year; investing in birth, one of the most meaningful human experiences, is worth it.
As always, we're here for you and are happy to talk about your unique financial situation if you're wondering about whether or not homebirth could be right for you.
Yours truly,
Charli & Sarah
