FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

At Holly No. 7, we offer personalized care, informed choice, freedom to move and eat during labor, laboring in water, water birth, many different positions for giving birth, long appointments and overall individualized and respectful care, while following the standards of midwifery care.

Appointments generally last 45 minutes, allowing us plenty of time to not only focus on the pregnancy but to get to know each other.

The global fee for midwifery services is $6300.   

This fee covers prenatal visits, your care during labor and birth at home or birth center and your care team, comprehensive newborn exam, and 6 weeks of postpartum care for you and baby.  The fee also includes all routine labwork during your care and any emergency medications you may need at your birth.

The fee does NOT include ultrasounds or medications or extras for you or baby.

To give birth at the birth center, the facility fee is an additional $1200.

We require payment in full from all of our clients by 37 weeks, regardless of insurance status. We ask for a $700 non-refundable retainer to put you on our birth calendar and offer a payment 4 installment plan for the remainder of the fee.

We use a third party insurance biller,Birth Professional Billing, a billing service that will work with you to obtain any potential reimbursement. It is free to receive a verification of benefits to see if you are eligible for reimbursement. Go to their website to have them verify your benefits.

Insurances that are NOT eligible for reimbursement with Birth Professional Billing are: Mainecare, Medicaid, and any government plans (TRICARE, VA, CHAMPVA).

There is no upfront cost to this service, however a 10% commission is due to Birth Professional Billing on whatever reimbursement you receive from insurance.

Midwives collect the flat fee upfront for maternity services. This guarantees payment for care and ensures you will not pay more out of pocket for your maternity care than the agreed package price, while still giving you the opportunity to seek insurance reimbursement. This flat fee is an all-inclusive package that covers a wide range of services and possible scenarios. Because it is a bundled cash price, it cannot be directly coded or submitted to insurance as-is. It is also significantly discounted since it eliminates the administrative costs associated with medical billing and insurance processing.

If you choose to pursue insurance reimbursement (or want the services applied toward your deductible), the flat fee you paid becomes a retainer toward whatever patient responsibility your insurance calculates.

Our practice operates on a cash basis and we are unable to provide anything beyond a receipt for our cash price. The receipt we provide is not coded for insurance purposes. Since we do not have an in-house biller/coder like other healthcare providers, we are contracted with a third-party company,BirthProfessional Billing, to submit your claims to your insurance.

Yes, In fact all routine labwork during your care are included in the global fee agreement!

We draw them in house, There are several recommended labs that we like to have our clients do at the beginning of pregnancy. They include: Complete Blood Count, Hepatitis screening, HIV, Rubella, Blood Type and Screen, A1C, Chlamydia, and Gonorrhea screening. Midway through the pregnancy around 28 wks we recommend a test for Gestational Diabetes Mellitus and around 37 weeks we offer Group B Strep screening.

Ultrasounds are not included in the global price.

For Self pay clients; we are partnered with Indigo Diagnostics. They offer quality, diagnostic ultrasound imaging with radiologist interpretation at a significant reduction in cost. They are available at our facility and their Ellsworth location.

Private insurance carriers; ultrasounds can be billed directly to your insurance, if we make a referral to a local hospital. We encourage you to find out what your deducible and coverage is before making this decision, as these ultrasounds are typically significantly more costly than the self pay price if comparing costs. 

Anyone that you would like to have at your birth is welcome to be there. This is a welcome conversation between clients and midwives throughout a pregnancy.

Different things can factor into who you would like to be there. Is this a person that you would like to have there or is this a person that wants to be there? How does this person feel about a community-based birth? Sometimes, having a few to large number of people at a birth can be distracting to the laboring process. This is something we are sensitive to as labor proceeds. 

Yes. We have erythromycin ointment and injectable preservative free and oral vitamin K available for your to purchase.

Yes

Yes! Our licensing rules allow us to care for folks who have had one prior caesarean section that was at least 18 months prior to the current pregnancy’s due date. For extra safety we require our first time VBAC families place of birth to be at the birth center. For more information about VBAC with midwives in Maine, click here.

We don’t have a strict policy that dictates the length of stay required. For the most part, discharge time is flexible. It depends on how/when the mother and baby are stable, what time the baby is born, and how far away you live from the birth center. The shortest amount of time has been two hours (!) and the longest was eight.

It is our goal to be attentive to you and your baby throughout your prenatal and birthing process to avoid emergencies.

If it becomes clear that you or your baby are at a particularly high risk of developing a complication, I will recommend we transfer to the hospital. However, sometimes emergencies do develop without much warning. We are trained to manage complications including shoulder dystocia, a needed resuscitation of a newborn and postpartum hemorrhage. We are skilled to stabilize complications that cannot be safely managed at home and facilitate safe and timely transport to the hospital. We carry several medications to births that are designed to stop bleeding, we also carry IV fluids, oxygen, and resuscitation equipment.

We have an average 15% transfer rate,  This includes those transferred during the prenatal period, labor, immediate postpartum, and newborns. 

In the event that you need to be transferred during labor or postpartum, one of our team goes with you and becomes your advocate and doula. We follow up with the same postpartum care plan for you and baby once you return home. Holly No. 7 is conveniently located just a mile and a half from Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center.

The best way to know is to come to the birth center and meet us or yourself/yourselves! We offer free consultations to clients interested in working with us for the first time. We encourage you to bring a list of questions, tour the birth suites and facility, and have a conversation about the kind of care you you’re hoping for during your pregnancy and postpartum period. At this visit, potential clients and their families have the opportunity to meet with the midwives and learn about the care we provide. Want to schedule a free consultation? Click here.

A doula can be a great addition to the birth team in providing support, information, and guidance. It is a personal decision that you get to make about what is right for you and your family. If you’d like to have a doula at your birth or available for postpartum support, we have a list of doulas on our affiliates page.

Holly No. 7 offers childbirth classes.

We also have a lending library of books which can be very useful in preparing for labor. Some of our favorites are: The Birth Partner by Penny Simkin, Active Birth by Janet Balaskas, and The Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth by Robert A. Bradley. We encourage you to bring any questions or fears about labor to your prenatal appointments, where we can spend time talking about them and helping to develop solutions that are right for you.