IVF Financial
Having a financial background, it didn’t take me long to figure out how much this is really going to cost us. You think what you read online is pretty accurate, especially when you cross reference other articles that say the same thing. You read IVF cost about 10k-15k, but as I was going through my financial consult with my IVF counselor I wanted to throw up. I wasn’t able to conference my husband because of his busy work schedule so the day before he just gave me his credit card.
So for those of you who are considering IVF, I’m going to keep it real and give you information that I wish I would have known. It wouldn’t have changed our decision to start IVF because we want this so bad, but maybe we would have started earlier and skip the clomid and other fertility treatments we’ve done prior.
For those of you who are closer to 40 in age like us, there might be a few extras that you may want to consider. But first let me tell you about the IVF procedure and the cost.
Stage one: Cycle Monitoring, Medication, Retrieval, & Fertilization
• Five office visit • Five ultrasounds • Five ventipunctures (Collection of blood from a vein or giving medication from an IV) • Five estradiols (estrogen hormones)
• Oocyte Retrieval
• Ultrasound Guidance
• Surgical Suite - Retrieval
• Anesthesia
• Embryology Lab Fees - Oocyte Identification, Fertilization Check & Culture Of Oocyte, and Sperm Wash
• Cryopeservation of Embryos, 1 Year Cryostorage-Embryo
• Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI)
• Blastocyst Extended Culture
•Embryo Biopsy
Grand Total - 10.8k
WAIT! That’s not the total. The total above does not include medications, which is 5k-7k. The genetic testing for the embryos which I have no idea how much it is because it’s done by an outside lab, but my doctor warned me that this is about 5k. The supplies that is needed to inject myself with the medication, gender sex selection, which my husband and I opt out of since when we asked how much extra this would be, our counselor said she didn’t know. All she can tell us that it will be in the thousands.
So lets move on to the cost of the Embryo Transfers -Stage 2, which includes:
Two Monitoring Ultrasounds
Embryo Thaw & Preparation
Assisted Hatching
Embryo Transfer - Ultrasound Guidance and Embryology Services
Operating Room Services
Grand total for the Embryo Transfer : 7k.
If you add everything up, my husband and I are looking at 29.8k. We did not include all the blood work and consults we did prior to this. This is the total moving forward.
I want to make this clear. I don’t like discussing finances with anyone. I think people’s money is their business. But then again, I wish there was someone out there that told me this. I wish we knew that at a certain age, the extras in IVF is important. There are things here that we can actually eliminate to make this more affordable. The biopsy on all the eggs to determine if there are any genetic defects can save us about 6k. The genetic testing we did with the both of us could save us $250. The ICSI procedure that we chose can save us $2k.
The ICSI procedure is another way on how the eggs will fertilize. The normal route is where they put the eggs and sperm in a petri dish and wait until they fertilized on their own. The ICSI procedure is where they would look at which sperm is the highest quality and they would inject it in the eggs with the highest quality.
So if we took away all those extras, we’re looking 20k.
I don’t want people to get the wrong impression why I chose to be open with my finances for IVF. My husband and I have been trying for a couple years now and we knew that IVF might be the only option in the future. We did cut our expenses and budgeted more wisely. We even moved out of the city, which broke our hearts, but thought it would be best if we wanted to do IVF. Moving out of the city to the city we live now helped us save more money than before. We wanted to make sure that we did not have to finance this because if this truly worked for us, we wanted to focus more on raising our baby instead of extra bills to pay per month. Also, waiting was hard for me. It was hard dealing with all the pregnancy announcements I have seen on social media, which gave me anxiety so I never scrolled through my feed. I would just post a picture or post a story and log off. All the baby showers I had to attend, while holding back my tears. Seeing people moving on to their own adventures by owning a house, while we were using our down payment on IVF. All the moments where I just fucken snap because people that knows my situation still asks when Chris and I are going to have kids. Do you not have a fucken heart? Do you not realize how much pain we have gone through? The shit I dealt with going through my infertility will finally be put to an end. If this doesn’t work for us, at least I tried without taking any short cuts.
I wanted to take a moment and thank everyone who has bought their Amazon items on my link. 100% of my side hustle will go to any IVF I may have in the future. For those who do want to help, please click on the “Buy on Amazon” button below and purchase your items on my link.
