So... How should I word this email to midwives? (Incredibly long)

[TeniBear]

Okay, for those of you not "in the know" it has been firmly decided (for now ) that I am getting my flipping homebirth. Yaaay and all that

Because it's kinda late in the game (right?) and we're on a horribly tight budget with this one, I'm going to send an email out to a few midwives to test the waters and see if they may be willing to take me on.

So far I have a dot-point list of everything that's happened to bring me to this point, which will be pared down and squished into a nice lovely letter. Here's what I have at the moment (and remember, this is just a rough - the actual email will be in letter form):

My pregnancy/birth history

• This is my second pregnancy, my first ended in a stillborn son (Ianto) earlier this year.
• There was no found cause for Ianto to be stillborn.
• Ianto was born in a hospital room at the Northern Hospital. The birth itself was great, but the treatment by doctors and midwives was not. (i.e. – they weren’t going to release him to the funeral parlour because they didn’t bother to check his wrist tag and see he's a Reid and not a Mitchell; they kicked me out of the hospital before I felt ready, for no reason; there was no follow-up aside from one midwife visit to check I was recovering from the birth...)
• Ianto’s birth was induced at 32 weeks due to his death in utero. I found the induced contractions a little hard to deal with, but was able to get through them with gas. He was born vaginally, leaving me with only a few grazes after a five-hour labour. When it came time to push, I found it much easier than anticipated and actually pushed him out while the midwives weren’t ready for him (they expected my pushing stage to last longer than ten minutes)

This pregnancy's “journey” so far

• I have been coping rather well with the fact I am pregnant again. We had been trying again from the moment we could do so. In June, I was diagnosed with mild polycystic ovaries, but managed to fall pregnant within the month anyway.

• Because my husband and I are on a fairly tight budget and we’d probably have to go through the public system, our first choice of a birth place was at home through the Sunshine Hospital Homebirth program.
• They turned me down because we live outside of their catchment area. There was no discussion about it.

• My second choice was the Family Birth Centre at the Mercy Hospital.
• We went on their tour, and fell in love with the birthing rooms. We looked at the birth suite/hospital rooms as well, and agreed I wouldn’t be able to birth comfortably in the sterile hospital environment presented there for a number of reasons.
• At some point, we found out they had changed their rules earlier in the year to disallow women who have had previous stillbirths. We decided we were going to try to fight this decision if they brought it up at our booking appointment. We thought it would take place no later than around 14 weeks.
• At 16 weeks, we were a little worried because we hadn’t heard back from the birth centre about booking in, so we called them. They told us they hadn’t received our referral from the GP, and that I had to call back the next Monday to book in.
• An aside: I have a bit of anxiety surrounding having to make phone calls.
• At 17 weeks, the Monday I was due to call, I started panicking and told a few friends on an online parenting/pregnancy forum that I didn’t think I’d be able to make the call myself, worrying that I wouldn’t be able to hold my ground if the birth centre told me they wouldn’t take me.
• Because of this, a few members decided to call ahead for me to test the waters and see exactly what these rules were. My husband got home later that day and called, confirming what I already knew from my friends – we’d need to talk to the Head of Department (Jill) to argue our case. Unfortunately, she was on holiday until the following Monday after that.
• Over the following week, all I did was stress about calling Jill and eventually I decided that I wasn’t prepared to fight any longer. My original choice was to have a homebirth, so if the Birth Centre wasn’t prepared to take me, I would do my best to have one.
• That brings us to today, October 18th. My husband called Jill earlier, and had to leave a message on her answering machine. At around five o’clock, I decided that if she hadn’t called us back in the next half an hour, I would give up on the Birth Centre. The half hour came and went, so I started looking at homebirth again.

Now, the bit I'm not entirely sure how to get to... Working out a payment plan. How do I essentially say to someone "yes, I know you usually charge this much, by this date, but there's no way we can pay you like that... Please let me use your services"?

Scott's in the loungeroom at the moment, I think trying to work out exactly what our budget might be for this. I don't expect it to be great. I think we may have to ask if we can use a little (or all/most!) of our Baby Bonus to pay for it, which I know a lot of people wouldn't be happy doing. I understand for things like this, we should be paying in advance... We just can't.

PS - Yeah, feel free to rip me a new one for punching above my weight. I deserve it for being so stubborn.

[PumpkinZulu]

I reckon everything you just said, pretty much as is. A bit OT, but DF o's a qualified bookkeeper and is about 18 months off finishing an accounting degree, he has exams ATM but in a few weeks would be really happy to sit down and do a proper budget/assesment of your expenses and see if he can't help you save a bit here and there

[Kazbah]

I would be tempted to find out the average HB cost and budget for it. Be upfront - maybe state "I understand HB are roughly $xxx. Unfortunately we had budgeted against the FBC and are able to pay yy% at tt(time) with the balance after birth". (although the baby bonus is in fortnightly payments?)

Might also be worth looking at your bills and pre-paying what you can so you can get a bit of a lump sum ready. good luck Teni

[HotI]

Teni, i wouldn't be giving all that personal information to anybody before meeting them or at least talking to them.

The most info i would share in an initial introductory letter would be:
I live in suburb and am xx weeks pregnant, EDD is xyz. This is my 2nd pregnancy, my first son was born sleeping at 32 weeks on date. I am interested in finding out more about your services and payment plans.

hth

[Smoke Jaguar]

Ok, I agree with Kate (ha ha, not often that happens ).
You interview THEM first, find the ones you like, narrow it down to about 2 or three (you may only have to stop at 2 or 3 before you find the one you like). When you are meeting them you tell them about your current pregnancy, they'll ask you about previous ones. You tell them later in the meeting that you would like to talk about a payment plan because you won't have the funds before the birth, and you would like to discuss flexibility in the fee. They all have set rates, and I know that many of them are willing to work around hardship (my poor MW's waited almost 6 months to be paid off, and that's considering we hadn't worked out a payment plan, we just got stuck with DP's job change and pay cut and waiting for house sale funds to come through) to get women the birth they deserve.
Yes, it isn't fair that we use our baby bonus on the birth, when one could have all the bells and whistles of a medicalised birth for free...and this is where we were at after DS was born, but when I knew I was pregnant with DD I didn't care about the politics anymore and knew I'd give up my baby bonus for the birth I needed to have (not that DS' was regrettable, it just wasn't at home!).
So, hold off the letter, just interview midwives (Midwives Naturally have a Meet the Midwives night one Tuesday a month where you get to talk to all of them in one night and choose your primary and secondary - their policy of two middies pushes their rates up more than others, but I actually like the idea of a secondary one) and work from there. All midwives I know just want HB to be accessible to everyone. Without Baby Bonus it would get trickier to secure payment from people, but whilst we have it there is a way to afford HB
Good luck

[onthefly]

I understand some midwives are happy to work out payment plans. Maybe just ask how flexible they can be in working something out in regards to insalments both pre and post birth.