Hospital Tours and Baby Classes

It's been a few weeks since we did the baby course at the hospital, pre-natal classes that is. The option to do a few hours over several weeks or all day over a weekend, we opted for the latter.

Apart from going all the handy stuff like breathing exercises and the whole process of giving birth, there was a lot of other little practical bits of advice that you might not even think about like what to bring to the hospital, including phone cards because you can't use a mobile phone there and the phone in your room is only good for instate calls, which to some might not be a problem, but for us, when family is either in another state, or country, makes quite a lot of sense.

Another great advantage to this course, for us at least, it included a tour of the hospital, to see the birthing rooms and where everything is and how to register and all that fun stuff. That was great, because if you didn't do this course and wanted a tour, that would have been $45 a person, cheeky buggers.

This is another thing where it's worth checking out the details of your medical insurance, because our policy allows the mother to claim her costs of the class back, which is $90 a person. The husband or who ever else turns up doesn't, but it's better than nothing. Some plans won't give you anything back, some others will cover the whole couple.

Other hospital classes include basic baby medical classes, breast feeding classes, how to wash/change baby etc. Your insurance might pick the costs up for these classes too. Ours doesn't though.

Breast pumps we found, can be covered if you get a subscription for as a medical need, other wise you'll have to pay out of pocket, and for an electric one, those can be very pricey.

Getting reimbursed by the medical insurance can be pretty quick, we already received the cheque after a few weeks of sending in the forms.