A.C.
I do not have any good books or blogs to recommend, but I do have a few suggestions from my own personal experience.
First of all I would strongly recommend that you check into a short term disability plan AND a hospital indemnity plan. Take those out BEFORE you get pregnant (they won't pay out after you are already pg). When you have a baby, you are technically classified as disabled for 6 weeks postpartum (8 weeks if you have a c- section). The short term disability plan will write you a check for a portion of your income during that time (60% in my case). The hospital indemnity plan will pay you money for the days that you are in the hospital (there is a cap on the number of days). In my case, I was paid $2000 from hospital indemnity just for being in the hospital for 3 days with baby number 3. My short term disability check was almost double that. I am very fortunate that the American Fidelity representative explained these options to me before we started having kids, because it has saved us a ton of money, especially at a time when things are expensive! I understand that these things cost monthly premiums, but when I calculated my monthly premium and compared it to the benefits, the benefits far exceeded the premiums. Side note here, you do not have to keep this forever...if you plan on having only one child, for example, you can cancel the policy after you are finished having kids or you can change the policy to one that kicks in coverage after 30 days of disability.
Next piece of advice would be to call your insurance company. See exactly what it will cost you to have a baby. Deductible? Coinsurance? What is the MAX that you will end up paying out of pocket? Remember that the baby will have his or her own deductible, as well, and do you have a family plan to cover the baby? Do you need to purchase a separate insurance plan for the baby? My brother and his wife had thankfully locked in the baby's insurance prior to having their child, because they ended up having their baby very unexpectedly at 33 weeks, and my nephew spent some time in the NICU. If they had not locked in the insurance ahead to time, they would not have been able to afford insurance to cover all of his medical costs.
Do some checking with your potential OB. Are you going through a family doc or a OB doc? I was surprised to find that my OB doc saves all of the prenatal appointments and submits it one time to the insurance company on the LAST doctor visit prior to having the baby. This makes a big difference with insurance deductibles. If you are due to have a baby in January and your last doctor visit is in December, then all of the prenatal appointments would go in the current year and the deductible might start over for you with the hospital visit in January. OR this could work in your favor if your doctor visits are billed the new plan year. Just be aware....
Along that note, after you find out your out of pocket expenses from the ins company, you may want to take advantage of a medical flex plan through your work (or your husband's). This is pretax dollars, so you could end up saving yourself lots of money (usually 20 to 30% depending upon your tax bracket). That is SAVING you 20 to 30 dollars for every 100 that you spend in medical bills that would have gone to taxes!!! Most employers put a cap on how much money you can set aside for medical flex, and be warned that if you don't use up that money then you will LOSE it at the end of the plan year. Your HR department can really help explain a lot of these benefits to you.
When you find out that you are expecting, you need to line out daycare right away. Infant spots tend to fill up really quickly, because if a daycare provider has an infant, then that cuts down on the number of other spots available (meaning an infant may take the place of two other children according to state guidelines since infants require more care). In our state, for daycare purposes, an infant falls under their classification of an infant until 18 months...not 12 months. Daycare can be very expensive, so you might check on the prices in your area so that you can start to plan for daycare.
We stocked up on diapers with each pregnancy. If this is your first baby, then you will probably get a ton of newborn and size 1 diapers, so you might stock up on size 2 and 3 diapers (unless you plan on using cloth diapers...can't help you there). I am an Amazon Mom (free) and I use Subscribe and Save through Amazon, and it saves me 20% off of every diaper order.
Hope this all helps!
ETA: Also, your baby's doctor will be separate from your doctor (unless you are using a family doc). You will get separate bills from the hospital, your doctor, the baby's doctor, anesthesia, lab, etc. some bills may come in months later.... It is why it is nice to know ahead of time what insurance covers. Also check with insurance on well checks and immunizations for the baby. For our children, they have had well checks at 3 days old, 2 weeks old, 1 mo, 2 mo, 4 mo, 6 mo, 9 mo, 12 mo, 15 mo, 18 mo, 2 years, and each year thereafter....those are WELL checks...not counting if you need to take them in when they are sick. Find a doctor you love, because you will spend a lot of time there in the first two years! :).
