LizaWasHere

Did you know that last week was National Infertility Awareness Week? Or that infertility affects 12.5% of the US population? I saw a few blog posts about it, but didn’t get organized to add my $.02 until now.

I hesitate to declare myself part of the “infertility community.” I don’t have PCOS, I haven’t had any miscarriages, it only took me five cycles of trying to get pregnant with Noah.

On the other hand, getting pregnant is the same big, expensive, medical deal for me as it is for someone who spends six months or a year having sex with the intent of getting pregnant, and not succeeding. We go to the same doctors and we take the same drugs.

I’ve been lucky.

Since we’ve been trying to get pregnant, I’ve had jobs with great health insurance that included at least some infertility treatment. Still, here’s a rough breakdown of our out-of-pocket expenses:

From the beginning to Noah’s birth:

• 10 vials of Our Anonymous Donor’s sperm: $2850 in 2004. If we were buying the same category of donor today, it would be $405 per vial, so I’m glad we bought when we did. Also, we paid for this through my flexible benefit plan health savings account, the $5k you can withhold pre-tax. Who knew that sperm would be a “qualified medical expense?”
• ClearBlue Easy Fertility Monitor: $175, plus sticks to test with, $40/pack of 30, roughly $160.
• Doctor visits when we lived in DC: Roughly $1000. The doctor was out of network, we did three rounds of unmedicated IUI.
• Getting the sperm from the cryobank to the doctor’s office: Roughly $85 each time for 5 cycles = $425.
• Storing the sperm from January 2004 through May 2007: $1155
• Doctor visits after we moved to Atlanta: Roughly $500. I had coverage, the doctor was in network, but I had a $400 deductible and a 10% co-pay.
• Drugs: Roughly $50.

Total cost of infertility treatment resulting in Noah: $6315.

Total cost so far in the effort to have a second child:

• Evaluations etc for Jill, when we thought she was going to have baby #2: Roughly $1000. The doctor/facility was out of network, and we have a $1500 deductible EACH.
• Storage with the non-profit facility Jill was going to use: $10/m for 3 months = $30. (Because of the 3 ring circus of sperm transportation that I went through to move it to my RE’s office, they don’t seem to have entered it in their storage billing system.)
• Doctor’s visits for me: Roughly $1500. They finally agree that I’ve met my deductible, so we have to have hit that, but I can’t explain it all.
• Drugs: $105
• Bloodwork while out of area: $913 that I am still fighting with the insurance company about. Either they should pay it, or they should count it against my deductible. They should quit erasing it from their computers when they get confused.
• Second opinion doctor who was out of network but I have awesome insurance so that was still 70% covered: $560. (I haven’t gotten that 70% back, so I’m counting the whole amount. It’s still out of my pocket.)
• EDITED TO ADD more ovulation predictor kits and sticks for the Clear Blue Easy Monitor. And pregnancy tests. Not to be icky, but we in the ttc blogosphere call all of that gear “peesticks.” I would guess roughly $20/cycle, including the canceled & skipped cycles, let’s say $80.

Total cost of infertility treatment so far in round two: $4188.

Also? Add parking to most visits (all DC and the convenient Atlanta ones, but not the ones where I have to drive halfway to Tennessee). Let’s say $10 for each DC appointment and $3 on average for Atlanta. Call that $60 in DC and $45 here, or $72 in round one and $33 so far in round two.

That brings us to a current $10608.

If I get pregnant this cycle or the next, while it’s still 2007 and we’re still doing IUI, our additional out of pocket costs should be minimal, say $250 or less.

If we don’t, we’ll have one vial left and have to have a serious discussion of IVF. My insurance doesn’t cover IVF at all.

The RE practice with whom we had the second opinion consult told us, in great detail, that if we did IVF through them, it would cost between $12,000-$20,000.