Having a baby in January and just found out we won’t have coverage for that month - HELP

Hi there, pretty new to using Reddit so forgive any errors here. My SO and I are in NC, married, family of 3 (currently), income of about 70k, not eligible for health insurance thru our jobs, and expecting our second kid towards the end of January, and really really hoping some of you wise folks might have advice for our situation, which is as follows –

Dec 7 we start an application for health insurance in 2023, are told that myself and our kid might qualify for Medicaid and to wait to hear back from the Medicaid office RE eligibility. We think this is odd because we make more money than seems necessary for Medicaid eligibility, but my SO signs himself up for a marketplace plan and we consider the matter handled for the moment and monitor for any contact from the Medicaid office.

Dec 15 we haven’t heard anything RE Medicaid so we log back on to healthcare.gov, see no new communication, and as we are concerned about having coverage for January start a new application for coverage to see if maybe the Medicaid qualification was some mistake based on an error on our end. This time we don’t disclose that I’m pregnant and this time the application comes back and says we are all eligible for Medicaid. Still not sure about this especially cuz in this state you need to make less than $700/mo to qualify and we do make more than that but at this point it’s after midnight anyways so we go to bed.

Dec 16 tonight SO calls the ACA help line and under the representative’s guidance starts another application. He finds out the reason we triggered Medicaid qualification is because we disclosed a planned Roth IRA contribution to be made this month (Dec) which puts our projected December income in the negative. We definitely don’t qualify for Medicaid but now we cannot sign up for coverage to begin January 1st because we have missed the open enrollment period for Jan 1st coverage. This new application begun today after the dec 15 deadline puts us over that deadline. The representative on the phone said there was no way he could submit a request for retroactive coverage, saying something along the lines of how we submitted an application then cancelled it. We enroll in a plan to begin Feb 1.

SO that’s our current situation! Any suggestions for us so that we don’t end up paying for a birth out of pocket? Looks like short term health insurance isn’t an option because pregnancy is a preexisting condition and isn’t covered by those plans. I know having a baby is a qualifying event for coverage so after this one is born we can get retroactive coverage beginning at birth but there’s a lot of expensive care that occurs prior to baby making an entrance. Should we just try to sign up for a plan through an insurer and skip the marketplace? Can we do that just for a month without paying a penalty? Is there really no way we can get ACA coverage beginning January? What talking points should we have on deck when we call the ACA help line tomorrow?