If there is one thing that I knew about IVF before we started on this journey it was that this wasn't going to come cheap. We still don't know exactly what this will cost us of course, we don't know what treatments we will need. We don't know how many it will take before they are successful. So, even though we can look up and see that our fertility clinic will cost us about $1,500 for an IUI that basically tells us nothing.
My husband and I decided to go to the bank yesterday to see how much money we could arrange before our appointment at the fertility clinic tomorrow (Gulp!). I know the clinic offers financing, and no doubt they will pretty give you anything since they are filling a space in your soul and you know you will pay anything to have that baby you want so badly, but we also wanted to know, financially what our other options were. Who knows if the clinic will give you the lowest rate? Maybe it's like a credit card at 20% where you will be required to send all of your frozen embryos out to work just to pay it off.
The woman at the bank was ridiculously happy for us. "Fertility treatments! How exciting!" My guess is she is baby crazy, but still confident that her nubile body will produce the children she is going to have one day... she doesn't understand that fertility treatments are filling me with dread and fear not excitement.
She notices the title "Dr." attached to my file. I hold a PhD and it has been put on my file as such. But she mistakes it for an MD. "I think we can get you a business loan. It has a much lower interest rate."
There is nothing more ridiculous to me than the idea that our baby making be financed by a business loan. This is not an investment that is going to be paid off any time soon. This is a long term investment that is going to require repeated infusions of cash as our child struggles to define themselves throughout childhood and adolescence. Unless our child is the next Justin Bieber (and i really hope not after watching his latest string of petulant tweets) there is little hope that this baby is going to post a profit margin in the first quarter of his or her life.
It is crazy the amounts spent just to get the baby. I'm so scared of how much money went out the drain for us and there's no baby yet, that is the part that scares me sh**less.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, hopefully we WON'T have a Justin Bieber for a child either, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE! That can't happen to us!! ;)
We are really lucky in Canada. In my province IVF is covered only if you have both tubes blocked, which is not my case since i've had a pregnancy. Even still many of the treatments are covered like the blood work, the ultrasounds, the doctor's appointments. It is only when we start to get into things like actual infertility treatments that there will be a cost. IUI costs $1,500 at our clinic. IVF is around $10,000 I think. But I get the feeling that it is all the incidentals that are also adding up.
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