Infertility Freaking Sucks
Infertility freaking sucks. Like sucks majorly sucks. Now, before I get into why it sucks so bad, I want to preface this with a statement: I do not resent people who can get pregnant without intervention. In fact, I celebrate them! Nothing makes me happier than a pregnant belly or baby smell. I am overjoyed when a loved one tells me they’re pregnant. The only times I ever utter the words “Why not me?” are in rare moments of depression, anxiety, and weakness in my faith. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s create a rundown as to why it sucks so bad:
In the state of Georgia, insurance companies are not required to cover infertility treatments. So, if you want to start a family, but have a medical condition that prevents you from being able to do so, prepare to hemorrhage money to pay for treatments. How much money, you say? Here’s a little breakdown of what happened to me – I went to a doctor’s appointment to do some screenings before my fertility treatments started. It wasn’t until after they had been all up in my vagina and taken 15 vials of blood that I was informed that I owed them $600 for that visit. Are you effing kidding me?!?!? SIX HUNDRED FREAKING DOLLARS. Yeah, not a drop of that was covered by insurance. But, a plus was that the 5 pills I needed to take WERE covered, because they aren’t just used for infertility (hooray, Femara!), but there was the following slap in the face when I was going to be charged $200 for a shot to make my mature egg drop. Yeah, no. Needless to say, my first round of fertility treatment resulted in a BFN (a Big Fat No, aka a negative pregnancy test).
So, now we start round 2 with a different medication called Clomid, which isn’t covered by insurance, but isn’t too expensive, running about $30 for 5 pills. But no one tells you about the whacko side effects, like hot flashes, insane mood swings, queasiness, cramps, crazy vivid dreams… AND you have to make sure you’re having timed intercourse during this whole time. I’m in the pissiest mood and I’m having to basically tell hubs, “You’re annoying the crap out of me, but I need you to get it in, so, yeah…” You can imagine what kind of conversations I have to have with myself so I don’t blurt out “Get it over with already!” You may now call me Princess Grumpy Pants.
Wanna talk about the other options we didn’t take? Intrauterine insemination (IUI) can cost up to $2000 per round and claims to have a 10-20% chance of pregnancy. So by those odds, I’d have to go through at least 5 rounds to get pregnant. That’s $10,000. Um, nope. How about in vitro fertilization (IVF)? IVF has a 20-35% success rate and a $14,000 per round price tag. Not to mention, you get all these little babies fertilized and sitting in a petri dish and you get to play God and decide which of them get implanted and which get discarded (unless you have a few extra thousand dollars sitting around to cryopreserve the eggs until you’re ready for them). If that first round fails, you have another $14,000 to drop to try again.
Mind you, I’m assuming that none of these successful pregnancies end in miscarriages, because that happens to 1 out of every 3 pregnancies. Yeah. Shit just got real.
“So why don’t you just adopt?”
Sure! Let’s talk about that for a moment or two or five. Adoption is AMAZING. In fact, we’re pretty sold on the idea of adopting, even if we are able to conceive. But it will not be an easy task. Domestic adoptions can cost between $30,000-50,000. International adoptions can be anywhere from $15,000-25,000. You can go the foster care to adoption route, but I don’t think I even need to go into details on how that would cause a world of heartache.
As you can see, it could cost a small fortune to have a child. It also can cause you to go absolutely bat shit insane. I had to root myself in my faith. I was promised I would bear a child and I have faith that it will happen. When, I don’t know. But I will, in His time on His terms. I’m sure of this, because He always provides.
Didi Dubose
Confidence Coach Extraordinaire
I give women the space to be honest, feel beautiful, and make life just a little less complicated. It's how life should be.