The Insurance Representative Tells Me How Much the Baby’s Delivery Will Cost
It all depends on the child’s arrival.
If it arrives in what we call The Dawning
Hours, you’ll have to ring the bell
for entrance. In this case,
the Dawning Hours Business Office
will contact you with a separate invoice
for the resources expended to release you
from the infected world
into the lobby where you will check in
with reception. If you arrive outside
of The Dawning Hours, you will enter
through the ground floor of the North Tower.
You will find your own way.
If you reach the Medi-Spa for Patrons
Near Death, you have gone too far
in one direction. If you reach the Sensory
Deprivation Tanks for Life Resistant Arrivals™
you’ve gone too far in the other.
If your convulsions are so powerful
that you cannot walk, you can
expect a bill
for anywhere between $50 and $12,000,
depending on whether your small sea breaks
in transit and stains the carpeting.
And Ma’am? If you don’t mind me
saying so, you and your offspring
are going to want to avoid any
version of a significant rupture
—a hemorrhage, a cord
prolapse, that kind of
thing—because while your
assigned medical professional is
in network there’s no telling
whether the Life-Saving Machinery™
is in network and by “no telling”
I mean they literally will not tell you
until you get your bill, assuming
you live, otherwise your bill
will go to your next
of kin, assuming your kin lives
beyond the birth, and, what’s that,
Ma’am? No. No, I don’t know
whether your plan covers Hereafter
Care. Do you have an advanced
directive? I see. Yes, certainly, yes,
I’ll transfer you Higher Up.
Copyright © 2025 by Katie Condon. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 20, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Preparing to give birth was, for me, as nearly a dystopian experience as the birth itself. During my first pregnancy, I’d often wonder if the healthcare system was designed with the intention to confuse people until they stopped asking questions. How naive of me. This poem aims to simulate the absurd experience of advocating for care coverage, only to be met over and over again with the farcically inhumane attitudes of the systems that claim to support our health.”
—Katie Condon