Want To Hold Your Newborn in the Hospital? It May Cost You.

   By SheSpeaksTeam  Oct 10, 2016

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You thought you had it bad when the hospital charged $25 for an aspirin? Well, one Utah couple was charged $39.35 for the luxury of holding their newborn son. Though the new parents are not putting up a fight about the strange fee, the dad did get a laugh out of it and believed it was funny enough to share on Reddit where his story soon went viral.

PIX11 reports about the Reddit user, Ryan Grassley, who posted a photo of his hospital bill that lists a “skin to skin after c-sect” fee of $39.35. According to Grassley, he was able to hold his newborn son, Samuel, directly after he was cleaned up from his wife’s c-section delivery and lay him against mother’s neck and chest. Apparently, this was enough to warrant an extra fee from the hospital billing department.

One labor and delivery nurse on Reddit attempts to explain the need for the fee saying, “As a labor and delivery nurse, I can kind of explain this. I didn't know that hospitals charged for it, but doing 'skin to skin' in the operating room requires an additional staff member to be present just to watch the baby. We used to take all babies to the nursery once the NICU team made sure everything was okay. 'Skin to skin' in the OR is a relatively new thing and requires a second Labor and Delivery RN to come in to the OR and make sure the baby is safe.”

Though Grassley and his wife were happy with their experience, he felt the fee was just too funny not to share, calling it “funny and a bit ridiculous.” He even started a Go Fund Me page as a joke to help pay the $39.35 fee.

And in an effort to further explain the “skin to skin” fee policy, a spokesperson for the hospital in question, Janet Frank, issued a statement. Frank says, “...In the case of a c-section, where the bedside caregiver is occupied caring for the mother during surgery, an additional nurse is brought into the OR to allow the infant to remain in the OR suite with the mother. This is to ensure both patients remain safe. There is an additional charge associated with bringing an extra caregiver into the OR. The charge is not for holding the baby, but for the additional caregiver needed to maintain the highest levels of patient safety.”

What do you think of this hospital’s fee for “skin to skin” holding after a c-section?

Do you think hospital fees can sometimes be extravagant?