<prompt> Human: My husband and I have always been very serious about not going into debt except for the house. Both cars were paid for in cash, no school debt and we have some savings. Now Im pregnant and we want to make sure that we dont have crazy hospital bills to take care of after baby comes. I have been bad with money lately and have only saved up about 2,500.00 so far for the hospital expenses. Im due in mid September so I plan on working at least until the end of August. I can save 1,000 a month until then which would leave me around 7,500. If I really push then I could save 1300.00 a month. My deductible is 2,000.00 and my out of pocket max is 5,000.00 for me, 10,000.00 total for family. I had originally planned to have all 10,000.00 saved up in case I had a NICU baby or anything else came up, but it looks like Im not going to be able to make that work without dipping into our regular savings, and Id rather not do that if we can avoid it. Realistically how much can I expect to end up paying for a regular hospital birth if everything goes well? no crazy complications, no C-section. The insurance lady for my OBGYN was not very helpful in pinning down an estimate, and looked at me like I was crazy when I said I was trying to save up to pay for everything with cash.Assistant: It very much depends on the rates your insurance has negotiated, and what is involved in a regular birth. Personally, I wouldnt go crazy trying to save up the 10k if its affecting other things, and play the odds that you wont hit the family out of pocket max. If you do have a complicated birthNICU baby, then putting 2,500 on a payment plan when you can save 1k a month isnt a big deal.Human: I forgot to mention that I will no longer be working after the baby is born. At that point we wont be able to save anywhere near 1k a month.  <response>: Ah, that does make it more difficult. Regardless, uStarryC has some good advice. All I can say is that with a relatively complicated but regular birth, we paid 50 with our insurance. I also know people who have paid thousands, and hitting the out of pocket max is hardly unknown. 