Are you HMO? I can only speak from my experience, but we got bills for ultrasounds, blood work, etc. etc. OBGYN charged a flat fee for the entire pregnancy, and then (in our case) c-section delivery. We got a different bill from the hospital for the procedure, delivery & room charges..etc. My PPO plan is 15% copay and I think 3 or 4K max out of pocket. Our son was born in the middle of February. We racked up around $2K in charges for the previous year and another 3K ish from the hospital & doc. We would have saved about $1-2K if our out of pocket max didn't reset on 1/1/10. Apparently it's somewhat common knowledge in the insurance industry?? The head of billing mentioned it to us and recommended we aim for conception OCT-FEB.

I'm in a PPO. We got a flat fee for the birth from the OBGYN (and C-Section). We got a different bill from the hospital as well for all that stuff.

All our charges didn't occur until the beginning of the 3rd trimester, although our OBGYN was flexible in making sure they didn't try charging us until we were on the new insurance in January.

That definitely makes a lot of sense, though. Depending on what your OOPMax is, if you hit it with the combined expenses but not split, you can get screwed.

So much for context. If only the forum allowed nested quotes.

i would have imagined it to be alot different, surely if people are planning a to have a child, the mother wouldnt want to be 8-9 months preggo in the middle of summer?

You're presupposing most pregnancies are planned.

Many aren't. And even if people are planning a child, the advice is usually "have frequent sex until you are pregnant", not "have frequent sex unless it means you'll have the baby in July."

but the distribution of unplanned pregnancies will be a normal distribution. The anomalies will be those that either planned to have their kids or didn't plan on having unprotected sex.

Oh, People that want successful athletes plan on early January births.

We specifically did this, but that was after suffering through a September due date. If she wasn't going to be pregnant due by June, we were going to consider waiting a few months.

But for teachers, being 8-9 months in June is probably the best bet.

Oh, I'm sure some people do this, but it's probably the minority.

I wouldn't want to be pregnant in summer, but I'm assuming that if you want to get pregnant, you'll take what you get.

for planned pregnancies, it's not uncommon to try to conceive for six months or more

Yeah, I think they don't even consider that you're having fertility issues unless you actively try to get pregnant for a year without conceiving, right?

Unless you have other issues that would predispose you to infertility, i.e. PCOS, endometriosis, advanced maternal age, etc. But even then they usually want you to try for six months unless you've say, been charting and know you're not ovualtion or your luteal phase is out of whack or something.

I like the fact that a lot of babies are getting squeezed out on Dec 28,29,30.

Probably for the tax break.

edit: oops, shoulda read the thread responses.

Made my day.

No, for a teacher, delivering in Feb or March is the best bet. That way maternity leave closes out the year, then you get the whole summer.

This. The better half and I will be trying to go this route when we have kids since we are both educators.

Early january babies would be conceived around april, which is tax season. Nobody is in the mood for sex during tax season.

ftr, accountants do indeed have sex

This. Took us about 7 months for our first conception. Started around April and seed wasn't allowed entry until late November.

For geezers, yeah. The older or more unhealthy you are, yeah, it *may* take that long. But even when you consider that, you would have more people starting (who are trying that way) at the safe end of the window, and more people are going to get pregnant earlier in the window than later (because once you get pregnant, you don't try any more, so therefore there are more people trying at the beginning of any desirable window than at the end).

Getting pregnant when healthy and no fertility issues is scarily easy a lot of the time. Especially when you time it right. Of course, when you have issues, it can take a lot longer (and possibly years without getting pregnant).

Duh. For some reason I thought they might want to actually do their job, should have known better.

Look everybody Tom still can be awful even after the hiatus.

Also the first 8 weeks after pregnancy the mother/child are at high risk from catching a cold. If you want to find the optimal date of conception you'd want to not do it during the cold season when everyone is sick.

Pretty much to the day for mine, thanks for making me think about that.

Man, how many VD babies are there in this thread?

*raises hand*

I just remember this long serious conversation where my mom told me that I was "at the wedding", so to speak (which I had already figured out, because I can count) and then she felt the need to tell me that both me and my sister were conceived on VD.

Thanks, Mom.

I'm sure the penicillin helped her.

I'm sorry it didn't help you, though.