It was a long walk - about 2 miles each way. I caught glimpses of myself in shop windows and I'm actually starting to look pregnant. The baby isn't so big, yet, but all of my insides are getting squished into strange locations.
By far the biggest pregnancy symptom I've been having for the past five weeks (sinceI got over the nausea) is thirst. I can't get enough water. Last night, I had two glasses before bed, one when I woke up in the middle of the night, and I still felt dehydrated this morning. Ugh. It's a good thing I like plain water - I could see many women gaining a lot of weight this way drinking juice instead.
Speaking of weight gain, Mark said yesterday that he thinks I've actually lost weight (smart man). As of our last appointment, I had lost 4 lbs. I think I may have gained a few of those back. We have another appt this Thursday (provided we don't reschedule), so I won' have to wait long to find out.
One of my biggest baby-related anxieties was put to rest this week (I think). Until now, I hadn't had health insurance that would cover prenatal care or delivery. I'm not yet eligible for the famous free Canadian health care (which, it turns out, isn't really free) and there isn't a huge market for commercially available policies. We've had to be content with a month-to-month traveler's emergency policy. If I broke my leg, we were covered, but none of the baby expenses were.
We had been going round and round with the Ministry of Health about why I should be covered (the baby is Canadian, etc.), but they still refused until my Canadian permanent residence comes through. Everyone we've spoken to in BC has been very nice and sweet and I can tell that they genuinely want to help, but their hands are tied. In a last ditch attempt, I called the Canadian Immigration hotline. For whatever reason, it seems that the people taking these calls are always Quebecois. They start out speaking to you in French, and when you respond in English, they get snooty. Imagine the rudest customer service person you've ever spoken to - that's what calling Canada Immigration was like. I mentioned to a friend that perhaps I should've spoken French to them, but she said it only would've made it worse. You see, I speak regular, Parisian-style French. Not Quebecois. Anyway, the short end of the story was that my immigration application will take 18 months to make its way through the Great Canadian Bureaucracy and there's no way to speed it up.
So, we were out of luck for health insurance. I emailed our midwife, who has been very kindly deferring billing until we get out insurance sorted out, and asked her to put together a bill for us so we could start paying her out-of-pocket. Then, I called the hospital to enquire what a normal birth costs. $3500, but it turns out that we don't have to pay it all right away. My new best friend in patient billing, Barb, said that she would work with us on a payment plan and not to worry about the expenses. Apparently hospitals are a little less rabid here about getting their pound of flesh.
After all this, we got the good news that Ken, one of the managers at Mark's office, has been on a one-man crusade to find a health insurance policy for us over the past two weeks. He finally found one. It's called a provincial replacement plan and apparently covers everything that the regular Canadian health plan does. It must be some kind of cruel joke that no one knew about it (not even the rep for the insurance company that sells it!). Ken warned us that we'd have to pay the premiums ourselves and that it was kind of expensive. I nearly keeled over when he told us that the monthly cost would be $140.
So, that appears to be the end of the drama. I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but maybe we've finally lucked out.
1 comment:
good karma=good karma. enjoy!!
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