The Cost of Infertility (part 1)

Infertility is a whole lot of things: heartbreaking, hopeful, exhausting, and also expensive. 

The obvious cost of infertility is the first one I'm going to talk about on here because its often the one people know a little bit about- the actual financial cost you pay to actually receive infertility treatments.

When we started on medications I was actually still seeing an OBGYN. It had been a year of TTC with no luck, so we went to the doctors and started on a treatment plan. 

The medications were timed around my cycle and horribly enough, they made me feel like I was pregnant even when I wasn't. They made me nauseous (so there was another med to counteract that) and some made my headaches turn to migraines for 4-5 days straight. (but more on the physical tolls of infertility later...).

Luckily, during this phase of our journey, we were only paying about $300 a month for medications and appointment co-pays.

We saw that OBGYN doc for nine months before setting up an appointment with a fertility clinic.

The fertility clinic is a whole other type of hopeful investing- nothing is covered by our insurance. Not even a small percentage. 

There are simply very few insurances that cover any portion of infertility treatment (if you have one of these insurance plans that covers stuff I would highly recommend just checking your vitamins/hormone levels while you are covered in case you need to see specialists).

Every appointment at the clinic starts out with a base fee of $280 & every additional thing that we do at the appointment adds additional costs (the bi-monthly ultrasounds, shots, bloodwork, medications, etc). 

Real talk here- one day I walked out having spent $800 in a matter of one half hour appointment. I cried hard on the way to work after that one- knowing that it would take me two weeks of work to make up most of the cost. 

I feel blessed that we are close enough to the clinic so they can do all the proper monitoring and checking, but the financial sacrifice to go is really hard. It is something that we are constantly looking at and addressing as a couple.

But if I knew that a baby could result from the cost of this, I would pay all the money I have right now to have that assurance. I think anyone in our shoes would do the same. 

So, while the financial cost of infertility is high, (as well as the interest rates on the loans) so are the hopes that it will one day payoff.