A new dad has posted a photo of the bill he received for the birth of his child on Reddit – and it’s got people fuming.
Ryan Grassley of Utah in the US highlighted in the post one expense line which was titled “skin to skin after C-sec – $39.95” – basically, the dad was charged almost US$40 to hold his newborn son.
Photo: Reddit
“The nurse let me hold the baby on my wife’s neck/chest. Even borrowed my camera to take a few pictures for us,” he wrote. “Everyone involved in the process was great, and we had a positive experience. We just got a chuckle out of seeing that on the bill.”
The new dad’s post has been inundated with comments.
“This has to be abuse of medical fees, disgraceful,” one person wrote.
“I’m still just staring at the $1,600. This should be shown to teenagers as a method of birth prevention. I’m 25 and this makes me think “I should wait a bit longer…” another said.
“This is ridiculous. You’re the only country in the developed world who doesn’t have state-funded health care services. How you can’t seem to think this is a basic human right is beyond me,” one Canadian poster shared.
Skin-to-skin contact is when parents holds their newborn’s bare chest against their own bare chest after birth. The process is supposed to help babies adjust to being outside the womb, create a bond between the parent and their child as well as offer a number of other health benefits for the baby.
Ryan has been a bit blown away by all of the excitement about his post, telling CTVNews.ca that the reaction to his Reddit post was “very unexpected”.
“And all seems pretty ridiculous to me. In the spirit of ridiculousness I created a GoFundMe for $39 to help pay for the first time we held our baby,” he joked.
Here’s a picture of his new bundle posted on Instagram.
