Travelling whilst pregnant- insurance 22 April 2022 at 9:38AM in Insurance & life assurance 5 replies 152 views

stevoh

Hi- my wife and I want to go away during the third trimester of her pregnancy, but want to make sure we are fully covered in case the baby comes early.

does anyone know if any good travel insurance for pregnant women?

Sandtree

What do you mean "fully covered"? Which country are you going to?

Pregnancy is basically a pre-existing condition, same as if you have any other parasite growing in you. All normal insurers therefore will exclude anything routine in relation to it which would include if the birth was a little earlier than anticipated. They will however cover non-routine matters such as if she was to develop sever preeclampsia and require an emergency c-section. 

Obviously if you are travelling to a country with reciprocal health agreements with the UK and you have your GHIC card then you'd be entitled to public health care in line with what locals get.

Emmia

Whereabouts in the world are you travelling?
 
Personally I'd be staying in the UK for a holiday in this situation - the NHS is a known quantity, in terms of costs / processes etc. 

user1977

I doubt you can insure against the already-known risk of an early birth taking place.

Aretnap

user1977 said:

I doubt you can insure against the already-known risk of an early birth taking place.

Ultimately you can insure against anything which isn't illegal and which isn't a certainty. Whether you can get an off the shelf policy from a mainstream insurer at a reasonable price is another matter. 

The fact that something is an "already-known risk" does not somehow render it uninsurable; most risks are already known to some extent. You can get home insurance if you live in a flood risk area and if you have a heart condition you can get travel insurance that will cover you if you have a heart attack - you might just have to pay a bit extra to cover the fact that you're at higher risk than the average person. 

Just how late are we talking about? If you're planning to go in week 37 for example, I doubt that in practice you're going to find cover for a normal birth which happens to come a couple of weeks before the nominal due date. OTOH if you're going in week 28 when going into premature labour would be an unexpected medical emergency then you might.

As a random example picked off the Internet, Insure and Go say they'll cover premature births up to week 32, but later births only if there are complications. 

https://www.insureandgo.com/travel-insurance/travel-insurance-whilst-pregnant

hazalume

Why would you take the risk?