Cost

Undergoing fertility procedures can be similar to trying to walk in quicksand. You can see your savings account, hopes, and dreams sinking into the ground, and the more you struggle, the faster they seem to sink.

Setting boundaries is crucial before starting fertility procedures. When you are desperate to become a parent, it is easy to fall into the trap of saying, "Whatever it takes." The problem is that there are no guarantees with fertility treatments. It breaks my heart to hear about people who invest their life savings on the dream of becoming pregnant, only to empty their bank accounts and still have no child.

Set a Limit on Cost

Fertility procedures are expensive, especially if you pursue more high tech options… [more]

My friend Dawn over at Family Found has written a remarkable post on fertility and insurance. No matter how much research I do on the topic, I couldn't ever say it as well as she did. She has graciously allowed me to reprint it here. Please I am infertile and we have chosen adoption over extensive fertility treatments because of the cost. We currently do not have insurance coverage for fertility treatments and one round of IVF with no guarantee of a pregnancy or live birth can cost w/drugs up to $15,000--that is for one month--imagine having to do 3 or so rounds without any financial assistance. There is a bill that has been introduced called the Family Building Act of 2005 and is being rewritten for the new… [more]

The hours spent sitting in doctors' waiting rooms, in line for the CT scan, watching chemotherapy drip into veins: Battling cancer steals a lot of time at least $2.3 billion worth for patients in the first year of treatment alone. The above quote is from the article Cancer's Unrecognized Toll: Time Lost from ABC News. I'm very sensitive to cancer news. Since my dad was diagnosed a couple years ago, and then passed away from cancer, my radar is up about anything I can learn about the disease. Kind of like I was while I was dealing with infertility. And it doesn't end. Now I'm aware to cancer and infertility news. At least my daily news intake has increased. Well, the above article got me to… [more]

I have just came home from a 36 hour hospital stay with my one year old son. He is doing much better now but due to breathing issues, he had to be admitted yesterday morning for treatment and observation. As the evening nurse was going through our discharge orders, I had a memory from being discharged from that same hospital myself after multiple D&C procedures. Back then, going over the orders through the haze of barely wearing off drugs and painful emotions I initialed every little line and signed and dated the forms at the bottom. On my copy that I was allowed to bring home, I diligently wrote down dosages, times taken, pain level and flow heaviness. There weren't any spaces to record my feelings at… [more]

I was thinking about money today. I am still amazed that we were able to adopt Becken without using our credit cards to help with the cost. Of course, if I really think back, it took us around 5 years to save up even half of the amount, knowing that at some point, we would beging the process. We had hoped to save the full amount before applying, but it turns out that we applied when we had about half of it. Lots of help from family and friends helped us make our goal, and believe you me, I was not shy about asking for help either. My mind then took me to wonder about the financing of fertility treatments. My first fit from google sent… [more]

Related to the previous post about technology making the business of categorizing who is a parent very muddy is another issue about technology: how much would you pay to have a baby? Adrienne of the AdoptRussia blog was nice enough to alert me to this article on the Baby Industrial Complex. It's all about the business of fertility in all its rawness. Unfortunately, when people desire something, in our capitalistic system, it becomes a commodity, with all the attendant pitfalls. Scariest among them is the fact that the business is largely unregulated. Most people would look askance at going to Mexico for a cancer treatment, yet people seem to see a picture of a cute baby in an ad and they'll rush to a… [more]