Baby Goes to America

As you all know, I have had considerable anxiety over where to deliver the baby given our circumstances. Not only does Liberia not give citizenship on birth but it has no decent hospital.  Haresh and I hail from enemy combatant countries and to make life easier for the little bugger, we need a third neutral country. After a lot of consideration and consultation, we finally decided to head over to the USA, land of the immigrants, equal opportunity, and human rights.  

We have friends in the US who gave us all very different and seemingly-scary information about entering the US while pregnant, One of our friends -  Haresh's best friend - misled us and told us that a child birth at a hospital could cost as much as $ 20,000 or $ 25,000 for someone without insurance! I asked a few other friends whether this figure was correct and some of them either told me they had no clue or the figure was correct. 

I looked up hospitals online and tried to find costs of a basic delivery but I could not see any figures at all! This confused me even more. At some point, I thought I was going to the UK, and search online for fees and costs did not yield any results. I had a friend who happens to be a doctor in the UK, who told me the average cost of a delivery could be £ 10,000 but would be cheaper in a city outside of London.

All in all, we were prepared for very high maternity costs.

How and When to Get In

Besides financial worries, there was also the issue of timing - when should we come out to the US? The original plan was to come out to the US in the sixth month before the baby bump was going to be evident.  We couldn't leave until the end of the sixth month since we were waiting on various payments and things to fall into place. We finally had to tear ourselves away on the 10th of October even though some of our critical shipments had not arrived. Thankfully, our excellent bank give us more overdraft so we could have some cash with us. 

In anticipation of questions being asked about being pregnant, we planned the outfit I was going to wear and, what'd we would say in case someone asked us if I was pregnant. We were advised by a friend that although there was no law suggesting immigration officials could turn away pregnant women entering the US by law, it was still possible to be stopped from entering. Another friend told me wear lots of loose and baggy clothes. A relative told me delete all e-mails and Facebook messages regarding any correspondence about the pregnancy, to not carry my pre-natal vitamins and leave behind any doctor's reports. And another friend told me not to worry about it. Yet another friend told me my timing was fine and, she actually knew someone who'd been turn away in her 8th month. Furthermore, my own brother told me that first-time Pakistani visitors to the US were taken to a separate room and interrogated! All in all, I was quite anxious about getting in so much so that we started avoiding telling people where we actually going to deliver the baby!

There was a bit of uncertainty on my part regarding where to actually go for the delivery. The initial plan was to go stay with  Haresh's best friend in houston, Texas but around August he had to decline his offer. I was initially annoyed with him but since then I fully appreciate that his circumstances were out of his control. So, I started toying with the idea of going to stay with my brother in London, even though I wouldn't get immediate citizenship for the baby. Eventually though I decided to opt for the US by asking my friend in Chicago to host me. 

Just before leaving, I would tell people that I was still undecided about the US or the UK. And this was hardly a week before our flight! That is how paranoid we were.  We also decided to fly via Europe instead of taking the direct Delta Airlines because Haresh thought someone we knew on Delta would snitch on us! 

Our final plan was to be casual with the immigration officials once we landed  and in case anyone asked what we were doing in the US, we would say, we were on a holiday. And in case anyone did notice I was pregnant, we would actually just come out and be honest. 

Well, we breezed through immigration! No one noticed I was pregnant - thanks to my layered outfit and also, that no one was bodily checking women for being pregnant! I was asked some basic questions:

1) What are you going to be doing in the US? "Visiting friends on holiday. I have never been and always wanted to visit." 

2) Can I see the address you'll be staying at? "Sure!"

2) Where are you coming from? "Liberia, West Africa."

3) Liberia?? how is it there after Taylor? What do you do there? "I live and work in Liberia, in fact, I used to work in the UN and now I have my own IT company. Liberia is still trying to recover from war but doing pretty well." 

4) Can I see your return ticket? "Yes, my partner, Haresh, back there, has it. In fact, we are traveling together." [So,  Haresh comes over and starts chatting to the fellow who turns out to be of Pakistani origin and was delighted to know we were an Indian-Pakistani couple.]

5) Why do you have so many checked bags? "We were allowed 2 bags each and they are actually empty since we intend to fill it up with shopping."

6) Are there are food items in your bags? "Yes, we are bringing Liberian pepper and coffee as gifts." 

"Welcome to the USA," says Philip, the Pakistani-origin US immigration fellow, and gave us each a 6-month stay! 

Total time between landing, queuing up at immigration, getting our bags, going through customs and exiting was so short that I was delirious with relief! Yes, I had made it!

I had had no reason to be anxious because I am well traveled; I have a valid visa; and, am clearly not here to defect, indulge in nefarious activities, or pile on the US Government. 

Finding a Hospital  and Doctor and How Much Would it Cost?

It took  Haresh and I a few days to settle in before we started our hospital search. We made a list of hospitals around the area - Roger's Park -  where we were staying and decided to hit as many as we could on our first Monday. 

We walked to the main street and tried to hail a cab. It took longer than expected and instead decided to go into the pharmacy behind us. We asked the lady what the shortest route to Swedish Covenant hospital would be. We explained we were looking for a hospital to deliver our baby. She asked us well, where was our doctor and wouldn't the doctor  be able to advise us? So, we had to relate our fascinating circumstances. So, she told us to first look up St Francis hospital since it was a bit closer before checking at Swedish Covenant.  Her niece had delivered a baby there and, she strongly recommended it. We asked for directions since it seemed hailing a cab was proving to be too difficult. She gave us directions and in fact, another older gentleman patron also chipped in and tried to give us some good directions. We were wished good luck!

We walked on for a bit and did not have to look for the bus since we found a cab eventually. We asked the Pakistani cab driver to take us to St Francis. Since  Haresh is very social, he told our whole story to the fellow. The driver called up another friend who he felt could give good advice to us. The advice was not useful at all and went something like this: "Just don't pay the bills at the end and say you are poor!" 

We got dropped at St Francis and were asked to go to the Financial Office to check out costs by the lady at Emergency. We went to the office and were met with 2 very chirpy ladies who were so delighted to find out I was pregnant! "Congratulations, is this your first?" I smiled at the barrage of questions and reminded myself to be more excited about the baby in the midst of all the planning and sorting things out! 

The basic package for a vaginal birth was $ 2,000! A C-section was $ 3,000! What?! We couldn't believe our eyes. Did they forget to add an extra zero? Was this a crap hospital? As you can imagine we were  quite delighted and still a bit wary since we still had to register with a doctor. We were given an 1-800 number (what an American delight these are!) and, meant to go through a telephonic procedure to make an appointment with a doctor. 

While  Haresh was on the phone, I started chatting to a lady sitting next to me with a tiny baby in her arms and, a toddler running up and about  around her. We started talking and, it turns out she is from Nigeria, living in Senegal, and had specially come to the US to deliver her baby. In fact, she had just delivered the boy 2 weeks ago and, had had to undergo a C-section because the baby's heart rate had dropped. She had in fact delivered her older son also in the US.  Her husband also showed up and, we all started chatting excitedly. I explained that we did not have insurance either and, needed some advice on what to do. The lady told us she would take us upstairs to her doctor and, introduce us directly instead of making an appointment on the phone. I asked her whether she was happy with the hospital and her doctor. She was!  I asked haresh to get off the phone and, he chatted to the husband who smiled when he heard that  Haresh was born in Nigeria! I love to see the expressions of  Haresh's country mates when  Haresh tells them this and even gives his Nigerian name to them. What a sweet West African union this was for all of us! 

So, our good friends took us upstairs where they were asking for their complete billing. They wanted to make sure their paperwork was all in order when they left the US and ever needed to come back. 

We met with a few ladies in the office who again, were so excited to learn I was pregnant and even said, we were brave to come out all the way to seek a safe place for the baby's delivery. The head nurse asked me a few questions and I explained to her that I really had not much pre-natal care up until now. Moreover, I really had no reports with me (My sonogram report from Nairobi was sitting in my apartment in Monrovia). She first told us that I could be considered a high risk pregnancy since I was already in my 6th month and had had very little care. She needed to call up the doctor and confirm with her. I told her I had had a very smooth pregnancy thusfar. Well, anyway, after a few minutes, she came back and said it was OK and the doctor would see us.

The fees for the doctor - or should I say OB/GYN - were going to be $ 3,150.00 (a for 7 pre-natal visits and the delivery itself) and we needed to make half the payment for our first appointment. We also needed to take some basic blood tests before the first appointment which was 2 days away, situated in a mall in Skokie. 

The numbers started looking good! We profusely thanked our West African friends for their good advice and, planned to meet up to further exchange some experiences. 

We walked around the hospital to get a feel for it and, it was great. It looked like it was well maintained and even had a self-playing piano in one of the lobbies! Coming from Liberia and having seen the horrors of its post-war hospital horrors - no jokes here - we could not be fussy. 

We had lunch at the cafeteria and, I was rather surprised to see the amount of junk food available! Wasn't this a hospital?

Afterwards, we got some blood tests done at the lab and, had to cough up $ 600.00! We started wondering whether such tests along the way would amount to $ 20,000 in addition to the other bills but we were later to be proven wrong a few days later.

We thought about shopping around more. The wise thing would have been to visit a few more hospitals, done a tour, and meet more doctors (if we could) but, with the way things had fallen into place, we decided to just do it! Moreover, we even had an excellent reference by a family pretty much in the same situation as us.

Our first appointment with our doctor in Skokie went quite well! We paid half of our fees and the visit was OK. I finally had an internal examination done and all looked good. 

We were asked to go to Skokie at the doctor's clinic since we wanted an urgent appointment and get things going. The next visits will be at the hospital. Everything looks good! 

The doctor told us to do a few more blood tests and she also scheduled a sonogram since we wanted to re-confirm our due date and gender of the baby (from what we were told by the doctor in Nairobi earlier in July). 

We went back to the hospital a couple of days later and, put aside at least $ 700.00 for the sonogram and the tests. Thank goodness, we were finally pointed out by the Financial Office that almost all our blood tests and at least one sonogram was part of our $ 2,000.00 package! So, the $ 600.00 we spent already went against our account. 

It's a girl!

The sonogram went well and, it's a girl. My due date is 6th of January. Nairobi was re-confirmed. My dear  Haresh was a little crestfallen since he already has two girls and was looking forward to a boy.  He has since decided little Kavita will be a tomboy. 

Some of you know, I'm naming the baby Kavita after my late friend from university. "Kavita" means poem. 

So my dear friends, all is well that ends well. The lessons we learned were one should definitely talk and consult with friends and family. Listen to advice, take notes and use everything to be as prepared as possible. But, it's not a good idea to be paranoid and freaked out. If you are not breaking any rules or the law, you really do not have anything to be afraid of. Hold you head up high! And, I'm not just talking about being pregnant and going to the US to deliver your baby. 

Another lesson is make a decision! Do not think too much or worry too much - if it feels right, just do it. I am more than sure we chose a good hospital and doctor. 

We are so relieved everything worked out so well. We will also have made some good savings which can be used to do some baby shopping! 

Lastly, I am very grateful to my Chicago friend for opening up her home and herself to Haresh and I. Opening up to me is OK but opening up to Haresh can be a difficult proposition.

I look forward to spending time with her and experiencing her beautiful city.