Heartache, Happiness and Hell Raising

I have been out of the blog loop for a couple of days and have much to catch up on. But today, my heart, thoughts and prayers are with Fran and her husband Mike at Everyone else but me. Fran is having surgery today. They found that her 6 week pregnancy (baby was seen to have a heartbeat) is ectopic. My poor, darling Fran, who is such a gentle soul, is facing her second ectopic loss.

Why should some face devastation after devastation, while others have their wishes granted? How is this fair?

And at the moment, I'm in the second category. I feel a bit guilty. God knows better than anyone that I don't deserve gifts or miracles. Yet one good thing after another is happening right now. The rug could be pulled a minute or an hour from now, so I continue to hold my breath. But I am most grateful for each blessing, large or small. And at the same time, my heart aches for my dear friends who are now bearing the great weight of sadness.

I had my first OB appointment today. Among other things I had to fill out a health history. One of the questions was "Mother's occupation." I began to write "retired" because my Mom is retired. I got to the letter "i" and realized, oh, wait, I think they mean ME! I am the mother! Ha!

I met with a nurse practitioner who did my U/S. She was so sweet and patient and even made me a photo identifying the baby's parts.

Baby appears to be playing peek-a-boo, and at the moment looks like it will need orthotic braces on it's crooked little legs, but hey, that's my kid!

Then at one point she said, "Look, the baby is kicking its feet!" I said, "What?!" and turned to see better and she held the wand steady for quite a while so we could watch as the baby kicked and even raised it's tiny arm and waived!" Yup, I lost it. I started to cry. Just for a moment. Baby is measuring slight ahead at 10w1d.

Good, good baby!

So what else good is happening? Well, I engaged in battle with my old nemesis, the Outpatient Monitoring Clinic (OMC). Remember how awful they were to me? Downright mean at times. They did not consider me to be "their" patient since they were "only" performing monitoring services (U/Ss and b/w). As such, they refused to submit anything to my insurance, told me none of this was covered anyway because it was part of an IVF cycle, and required me to pay everything out of pocket at non-contracted rates. They refused to even negotiate the fee.

I took my paid invoices and submitted them to my insurance company. Why not? Who says nothing is covered? It can't hurt to try. The insurance wrote to me, saying that they required the doctor to sign the invoices. When I called the OMC to ask that a doctor sign the papers, I was essentially told that they would likely refuse my request because they did not consider me to be "their" patient and therefore required me to pay the higher rates. She further said that they would not communicate with my insurance company because if the insurance company determined that the services were covered, the OMC might be stuck in the position of having to pay back some of the money!

Can you believe the nerve??????!!!!

Oh yeah, I was all over that. I called the insurance company and several calls from them were made to the OMC. My understanding is that legally, they cannot refuse to submit a claim. Well, I think they felt the fire under their feet and finally caved and gave the insurance company confirmation of services provided to me.

The insurance company called me today and said the services provided by the OMC are covered! There is more work to do to straighten this mess out, but those of you who know me, know that I won't back down from a good fight with the OMC. I may actually end up getting a nice reimbursement. If I find out they were engaging in unethical billing practices, I will rush to report them to the licensing agency.

Other good news? I still feel good. I've gained only 2-3 pounds and although I am dead tired at the end of the day and have had a few days of uncomfortable constipation, overall I feel really good.

I am so, so grateful and humbled by these gifts.

Next on the schedule will be an NT scan in a couple of weeks as part of the various first trimester screenings.

And now I need to come visit all your blogs and catch up. Happy weekend, friends!
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