Real Life

Hospital charges dad $39.95 to hold his newborn baby

A new dad has posted a photo the bill he received for the birth of his child – and it’s got people fuming.

A new dad has posted a photo on Reddit of the bill he received for the birth of his child – 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 $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. There were the fun ones:

  • “I usually pay way more than 39.35 for skin to skin.”

  • “Direct eye contact would have been an extra $15.”

And the outraged ones: “This has to be abuse of medical fees, disgraceful.”

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.

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