Prenatal Visits and Turkey Burgers

by FrugalBabe on October 11, 2007

We had our first prenatal appointment yesterday with our midwife.  We mainly just talked about our health history, lifestyle habits, etc, and she weighed me and took my blood pressure, and we both had to have blood drawn at a nearby lab.  She said that when we come back in three weeks we’ll be able to listen to the baby’s heartbeat.  So excited!!

We paid a $350 deposit to the midwife at our appointment yesterday.  We set up a payment schedule of $1000 in January, $1000 in February, and the remaining $650 by the middle of April.  It’s nice that the payments are made in the second half of the pregnancy – the longer the money sits in our HSA, the more the money can grow.   It’s a very stable, not-too-aggressive growth fund, so it’s good for short-term savings, but it’s making a decent return this year, so we’re happy to leave it there as long as we can.  We’re continuing to make our HSA a priority for the rest of the year, and probably throughout 2008 aswell.  We’ll be depleting it quite a bit in the first half of next year, with my husband’s knee surgeryand the midwife’s fee, but we’re hoping to rebuild it throughout the rest of next year.  And then not use it again for a while!

Tonight we were in the mood for burgers, so I walked to the store and bought ground turkey – on a great sale, so I bought two packages and froze one.  I also got whole wheat buns, an avocado, ketchup, and sweet potatoes.  I came home and made six turkey burgers from one package of meat.  So I froze four of the already-made burgers and all but two of the buns.  Now the next time we feel like burgers, we can just put the frozen ones in our Flavorwave (yes, we bought it from an infomercial, no we’ve never done that before, and yes, it’s my absolute favorite appliance in my whole kitchen.  I am not getting paid to write that).  So for $18 we got great burgers and sweet-potato fries tonight, plus two more nights in the near future, plus I have a whole package of turkey in the freezer.  This is why you can’t beat cooking at home.  The dinner we had was very similar to what you’d get at a mid-price burger place ($7 or $8 per plate), and it cost about $5 total for both of us.  And I know exactly what was in it (and what wasn’t), which I can’t say when we eat out. 

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  • http://mrsmicah.com Mrs. Micah

    Plus tip, if it’s a nice burger place and if you get drinks that’s a bit more too.

    Baby’s hearbeat…so exciting! There are so many changes going on right now, growing that little heart and everthing. :-)

  • http://frugalgeek.net Pablo

    Does that Flavor Wave really work the way it is advertised? Something like that would severely simplify me eating real food(time constraints) but things like that make me so skeptical! How long have you had yours? Does it seem like it’s a solid piece of equipment or does it feel like it’s going to fall apart all the time?

  • m-

    Can you explain, a little about the flavorwave… It sounds interesting… I would greatly appreciate it.

    Thanks,
    M-

  • Ashley S.

    I’m glad your prenatal went well!

    And I’m also glad that you get to use your HSA for your midwife. With our insurance, it was required to a licensed medical professional. Which in our state does not cover direct-entry midwifery. Boo on that.

  • FrugalBabe

    Ashley,

    Our health insurance won’t cover a direct-entry midwife either – very very few insurance policies will, and they tend to be coverage offered through very large companies with liberal leanings who have lots of negotiating power with insurance companies.

    We cannot use our health insurance to pay for the midwife, but we can use our own HSA money. It’s money that we’ve put into an account – separate from the health insurance policy – that we can use for medical expenses, including those that are not covered by our health insurance policy. The benefit is that the money is tax-deductible. But it’s still our own money – the insurance company won’t cover anything to do with our home birth or midwife.

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