Congratulations! You’ve just given birth to a healthy baby. This is an exciting, exhausting, and overwhelming time. So here’s the bill:

OB-GYN Overtime: Your child was born at 12:04 A.M., which, unfortunately, is between shifts. That means your ob-gyn was working overtime, making time and a half, plus an extra $7,000.

Out-of-network fee: Remember how at one point an anesthesiologist walked into your room and said, “Are you Ms. Phillips?,” and you said, “No,” and she said, “Oh, O.K., must be the wrong room,” and left? The anesthesiologist was out of network. That’ll be $2,500.

ASSORTED Supplies: $15,000 for I.V.s, medications, medical tape, pens, Post-its, staplers, staples, color toner for the printers, and candles for Nurse Becky’s birthday cake. Yes, it was Nurse Becky’s birthday the day you gave birth, and, yes, she did notice that you didn’t stop pushing and come out into the hallway to help sing “Happy Birthday” to her. You should probably send her a card. Actually, we already did that for you. It came to $5.50.

Beeps: $900 for beeps. Boy, lots of things beep when you’re in the hospital. Each beep is fifty cents.

Le Lactation Fee: Your lactation specialist was born in France and demands to be paid in euros. That means a $15 currency-conversion fee on top of her regular fee for making you feel bad about latching.

Knee Fee: Your child was born with knees. Those are going to be twenty bucks a pop.

Doctor consultation: About an hour after you gave birth, your doctor came back into your room and said, “How’s Mom doing?” That was a consultation—$800, please!

Pizza: $75. O.K., you were asleep when we approved this expense, but your newborn baby appeared to give a thumbs-up when we asked if it was cool to order some pies for the staff. They really hit the spot. Thanks, baby!

Maintenance fee: That room was a real wreck when you were done with it. The cleanup cost totalled $950. Try to make less of a mess next time (assuming that you can afford a next time).

Ibuprofen: You owe $60 for that Advil your husband requested after sleeping balled up in a chair all night.

Fetal-Heart-Rate-Monitoring FEE: Do you know how hard it is to monitor the heartbeat of a tiny person who is inside another person? I don’t, but it sounds pretty hard. Let’s call it $4,000 worth of hard.

ACCOMMODATION: $825 for the room; $330 for the bed in the room; $80 for each chair in the room; $275 for the paint on the walls in the room; $700 for the windows in the room; $180 for the ceiling in the room. We threw in the floor tiles for free. You’re welcome.

EKG, ECG, UPS, SOS, MIA, LOL, ICYMI, TMI, ASAP, FUBAR: All those letters are going to run you about $12,500.

Epidural: Priceless.

Amendment: Turns out that epidural was not priceless. It was $2,500.

Look, you think I like doing this? Spending day after day breaking down the miracles and tragedies of human existence into costs and surcharges? Knowing that my own need for money and health insurance binds me to a job in which I condemn others to a lifetime of debt? Realizing, as I stare into the abyss of my spreadsheets, that we are all cogs in a capitalist machine that commodifies our health from the moment of our conception to the day we go to our grave? Well, I don’t. But, here we are, so:

Billing-Department Liquor Bill: $500.

Your insurance will cover eighty per cent of ten per cent of the first forty per cent of the charges after your deductible is met. The remaining charge of $70 gazillion can be paid in one lump sum or in monthly installments of $75 for the rest of your life, your children’s lives, and your grandchildren’s lives.

If you would like to dispute any of these charges, our billing department is open from 10 A.M. to 10:14 A.M. on the first Tuesday of every month. The fee to find out our phone number is $40. ♦