Weekly What-If
A commenter posited a question of me – well, really it was more of an assumption, but I’ll take it as a question. It actually is an interesting one. I know what I would do, but what would you do?
If you had an option between paying out of pocket for infertility services or being put on a wait list to receive it for free, which would you choose? Would you pay to get in right away? Or would you wait? Would it matter how long the wait was? 3 months? 6? 12? Would it matter what treatments you were getting? IUI? IVF? (For simplification, let’s say that the wait list is just to get accepted into the treatment program – once you’re in you would get the same cycle treatments on the same timeline as if you paid.)
My Take: This is not what I think I would do, it is what I *did* do. After we lost Devin I wanted to start infertility treatments right away, as soon as possible. It is a horrible, twisted feeling to wait for something like this, not just when dealing with infertility but also after such a horrible loss, all I wanted was to be pregnant again. But we already knew we needed IVF. We could have taken out a home loan, I suppose. We could have put it all on our credit card. But instead I waited 6 months to get a job, and then 3 months for my insurance to kick in, at which point I was able to do an IVF cycle under my new insurance and pay only a couple hundred dollars in co-pays. If we just needed clomid or injects maybe I would have dug into our pockets a little out of desperation… but for us $15k IVF cycles are worth a few months to get for free.
That’s such a tough question…the waiting is so hard. I remember the first m/c…I was shocked but none the less ok that I could get pregnant. Then I got pregnant again and had our second tri loss…devestating. My dr said we had to wait 6 mos. 6 mos felt like an eternity. I’m a results now kind of girl. My husband would probably say wait and I’d probably say if we had the cash…do it now! It’s hard to focus on anything else when all you want is a baby. I’d have to be in the situation and since I didn’t go through infertility treatments I can’t say for sure, but I am NOT good at waiting for anything. It’s my worst character flaw. I get very focused on something, and its all I think about. So with that, I know if I could afford the treatments I wouldn’t wait.
Knowing that we HAVE to have IVF with TESE done in order to conceive, we’d wait because we cannot afford to pay out of pocket(at least at this point). Right now it’s looking like it would be 2 years more before we can even afford it. We have NO insurance coverage beyond clomid/femara and TI.
If we end up going the Donor Sperm route, then we’ll pay out of pocket(we’d only need stims & DIUI then, not IVF). It’s simply a matter of cost, as much as we want children, I cannot go into debt to have kids, because having that amount of debt would mean I couldn’t afford to give my kids the life that I want them to have. So we wait. We’ve waited 3 years at this point, what a few more?
I just can’t be a lurker any more. I’m too darn excited for you!! That beta # is *great*. Hoping the time passes at a decent rate till your U/S.