June 8, 2005 ~ Telling Dreams
Wednesday.
May 17
I dreamed last night of surviving a nuclear explosion. I couldn't get out before the radiation fallout, though, for I didn't have enough money to pay for the train. In one of the few remaining standing buildings, I held a little Asian girl while she played, oblivious to what had happened, was happening. She was very sweet and innocent, and kept kissing my cheek. Pink shirt with roses. I tried not to cry. She was hungry, and would soon be sick, and there was nothing I could do, for everything cost too much.
I sank down on the couch with the rows of numbers, dollar amounts, in front of me. Morgan stood, anxiously, by the door. "It won't work. It can't work. I've tried it a few different ways; it always comes up short," he said.
"Wait. Wait. Let's think. There's got to be a way. When you were unemployed for almost a year, we made do on just my income, which is half what you're making now."
"Yes, but only because we filled up a credit card... Not that we had any other choice, it was that or never eat, never fix the cars, let our electricity be turned off... Plus, most of that time we didn't have student loan payments, we were still in the grace period. But still, those credit card bills racked up during that period are part of why we have this problem."
I remembered those months. No breakfast, no lunch, and night after night of dried beans and rice. Free, past-date, wilted vegetables and bruised, moldy fruits from the Co-Op. Those days broke Morgan's will, and came closer than I'd like to admit to breaking our marriage from the stress alone. He'd sunk into a deep depression, to the point that I hardly knew him anymore.
I fought down the lump in my throat. "We're not going to go there again. Not with a child to take care of."
Worry filled his face. "But how?"
"Well, let's see how we can prune this..."
Cancel my cell phone? Or perhaps both? But there's still a year on the contract, and it turned out that the fee for breaking contract is so steep that we can't afford to cancel. Besides, we don't have a landline, and getting one would be an added expense that we can't consider. The few utilities we pay for are essential, so there's no cutting back there. Cancel the Internet connection? But any work-from-home sort of job that I could do would require Internet access.
We went over option after option, and managed to squeeze $20 here and another $15 there, but still, no matter how we cut it, we were still at least $300 short for the monthly budget without my income. And that wasn't even factoring in unexpected things like medical bills, vet bills, or car troubles. And where are we going to find money for all the baby supplies we're going to need? Who knows?
Maybe once the baby comes, we should cancel our health insurance except for coverage for the child? We'd really rather not consider that, but...
We've always expected that once we have a child, whichever of us earns less would stay home with the baby. Since I'm the one who makes less (not to mention being the one who most wants to care for a child full time), we expected that I would be quitting my job, eventually.
Unfortunately, sometimes you have to sacrifice the way you want to do it for the way you have to do it. So we looked into daycare options and babysitters. And it turned out that even the cheapest cost almost as much as I bring home per month.
What would be the point of working just to pay for daycare? There would be no point, that's what.
So we figured that it might be possible, if we really squeezed the budget right away, to pay off the credit card before the baby arrives, while we still have my income. That would free up a little extra money each month, once it was paid off. And if we could also make a dent in the bank loan that we'd taken out to pay for tuition that hadn't been covered by financial aid... Meanwhile, I would research options for things I could do working from home while caring for a baby.
We had a plan. It wasn't a very solid one, but we had a plan. I would not let money keep us from giving our child a living, a life. We had to find a way, somehow. The desperation in that dream of watching those trains leave me and that little girl behind to suffer our fates thanks to a lack of money was a feeling I was determined never to have when it came to our child.
June 1
I had a dream that I was in labor, but in an incredibly uncomfortable place. Cramped, unable to move, on a hard surface with sharp corners, and people were not being helpful. I was dreading what was to come. Fear and anxiety.
"Wait. You mean that now that we've paid off the $500 deductible for the health insurance, we still have to pay for 30% of all midwife costs and 20% of the fees for the birthing center at the hospital? I mean, the midwife fees are really cheap, but 20% of the hospital fees will be over $3,000! We can't afford that. There's no way we can afford that."
"I know."
"Hospitals are really expensive."
"I know."
"And that's assuming that I (am wonder woman and) have a super-fast labor and delivery with absolutely no complications. Like we can count on that..."
"Well, you'd better pop that baby right out like you've done it ten times before, because we can't afford for you to have a nice leisurely labor, missy," Morgan said in a half-hearted attempt at a joke.
"How come we were told that we wouldn't have to pay any more after the $500 deductible?"
"Well, apparently we didn't ask enough questions. Apparently, no one thought it important to mention that the co-pay would still apply."
"Well, chalk that up to youthful inexperience and bad advice, then. We couldn't have known. But what are we going to do now?"
"I don't know, Melissa. I don't know."
"Maybe we need to ask some more pointed questions."
"Right."
"Can you call the insurance company again?"
"I will."
After crawling around in the bowels of the insurance company's phone system for a while, Morgan came up with a shiny life buoy. Once our out-of-pocket expenses had reached $2,000, then the insurance company would take on 100% of the bills. Plus a few fees that don't count toward the insurance, it looked like medical costs, totaled, would be around $2,500 (not counting the principle cost of insurance deducted from our paychecks every month in the first place). Money we certainly didn't have to spare, but it was much better than the $4,000 estimate we'd been looking at a moment before. We'd take it. (Morgan just had to promise not to get injured or sick in any expensive way this year, because then the out-of-pocket limit would double).
Those costs would take a huge chunk out of the money that we had hoped to use toward paying off the credit card, though, enough that such a goal would not be reachable. We would have to find a way to make at least $500 extra every month once the baby arrives.
I started researching jobs that I could do from home while taking care of a baby. Nannying? With two huge dogs of their breed, most people probably wouldn't see my home as one ideal for placing their child in for the day. (We chose Monty and Rose for their gentleness and the signs they showed of being good with children, and we are going to take extremely careful precautions once the baby arrives, but still, I wouldn't blame someone unfamiliar with them for any snap judgments).
Internet sales of items I'd sewn or crafted? Not the sort of income that would be reliable on a month to month basis, but I could try. Charging for Reiki sessions? Again, not reliable, and I don't have a massage table or a quiet studio in which to receive clients.
The things that I would be best at, however, like freelance writing, building websites (but only if I update my code by about six years), or editorial work all require the ability to attend professional meetings with clients. Not only would the jobs ebb sometimes and be unpredictable, but they also require uninterrupted time to concentrate on the work. Would I be capable of being professional in such a way, attending meetings, and finding uninterrupted time to complete the more complex work, all while being a full-time mother?
Other stay-at-home moms would laugh in my face. "You think you're going to have the time and energy to take care of a baby full time AND work on complex things needing real concentration? HA! Good luck honey. And hope the baby doesn't spit up on your blazer as you're running out the door late for one of those professional meetings..." I've never been very adept at being "professional" anyway. I was lucky to find this job, where my quirks and odd style fit right in.
Insecurities seized me.
What if I took on a night job like waitressing, for the evenings while Morgan is home? I'd not be able to see him much, but at least we'd be able to get by... Though I wondered if exhaustion would take over my life. Care of a baby all day then on my feet and rushing around all night until late? And would the management allow me time to pump some breast milk halfway through the shift? So many uncertainties. So many insecurities.
"I don't know if I can do it, Morgan, I don't want my ability to squeeze a few more bucks into our budget to be what we rely on to live."
We have been planning this pregnancy for a long, long time. And through the long months of trying, we wanted to succeed so badly. I just hadn't realized, beforehand, how expensive hospital bills are, and how little insurance covers. I was misinformed.
We also, stupidly, hadn't thought to look seriously at what our budget would look like without my income. Morgan and I live very frugally, spending at most $50 per month on luxuries, putting most extra money directly toward old debts that we could not have avoided. We're both college educated, have retirement plans and full benefits and good jobs. We live in subsidized (cheap) rental housing. We keep one old but reliable car, bought inexpensively used, and drive usually only once a week to get groceries and maybe one or two other times to visit friends or do something fun. We get clothing and other necessities free or cheap used. The only consumerist-type spending we engage in is the occasional book, movie, or dinner out (which we limit severely), and those will no longer be indulged in once the baby comes. We honestly just plain didn't expect to have any problems once the baby came, because we've always been so careful about money. People like us, who work very hard and are very frugal and careful with their money, they don't just slip through the cracks so easily, do they? If so, our society has some mighty big cracks...
How in the world do single parents do it? We don't qualify for Medicaid; we swallowed our pride and checked. Not even only on Morgan's income.
So the dream fit. Circumstances surrounding the birth were going to be very financially uncomfortable. For the last month of the first trimester and a ways into the second, I was starting to get pretty depressed, despite how very much I wanted this baby, and for how long. I already love this child more than I can describe. It was the worst pain in the world to know that I may not be capable of providing for it. It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
June 6
I had a dream that I was giving birth, very comfortable surroundings, supportive people. I had the sense in the dream that I was opening myself to the pain, trying to let it come. I knew that if I got over this one last hump, all would be well. It was a joyful, relieved dream. My child was coming, and everything would be okay in the end.
Something shifted, around last Friday. I can't really describe what. We still don't know what we're going to do for extra income once the baby comes, medical bills still look just as bad, and debt still looms. We have at least decided that we're going to cash in my retirement plan (a hard decision, but necessary) come 2006, and use it to pay off all the medical bills and some of the debt, but that certainly isn't what caused this emotional and spiritual shift that I'm feeling.
The second trimester technically started a while ago, but I think that in my mind, last Friday is when it really started for me. Something inside of me simply shifted from depression to hope. I don't know why. And perhaps I am foolish, but I simply have to believe that somehow, this will all work out. This child is a dream a long time coming, an incredible blessing. Something as mundane and pointless and uncontrollable as money cannot take the beauty of this experience away from us.
I'm confident again. Just as women have been giving birth since the dawn of time, families with very little means have found a way to feed just one more. We will make it work, somehow. We're very resourceful; we work very hard. We've survived on little but love and luck before; we can do it again.
Each time I feel a little flicker of movement below my belly button, a surge of love and protectiveness washes over me. We will find a way. Somehow. No matter what. We have to.
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