have you / would you get massively into debt to pay for...

[notonyournellie]

...IVF?

For instance - say you wanted a child / another child so much but were unlikely to have one naturally.

There's no funding available for IVF on the NHS and you have no substantial savings. You are in your mid thirties so if you were going to do it then it would have to be sooner rather than later.

Would you say (a chance) of a child would be something worth getting into debt for, in the same way a house or car is?

Or is this something you would not even consider?

maybe one shot if I had a plan as to how to pay it back

I'd say the same as blueblues.

How much is one round of IVF?

I probably would if I had no children. If I could pay it off then yes . I probably wouldnt now but dependson cicrumstances.
I would be more likley to get into debt for this than a car for example.

I would certainly consider a child more worthy of getting into debt than a car!

My sensible side wants to say that I would not get into debt unless I new I could repay the money easily on a relatively short period of time. However if I was in that situation I don't doubt I would make myself bankrupt trying to get pregnant.

Only if I knew I could repay it, which souns obviously I know. I don't think I would if I already had a child, don't know though as am pregnant with DC1 at the moment so have no idea how it must feel to have one and desperately want another. (Have no idea how it feels to have one yet!)

Would consider it, but would also want to consider how I had got to my mid-30s with no savings and still thought I could afford to take on regular repayments on a significant amount of debt, possibly in addition to the cost of a child?

Would try to save first, even if only part of the cost, just to feel confident that I would be able to find money each month to repay the debt.

All that is theory, of course. If I was not able to get pregnant then probably I wouldn't much care about financial planning and would just have the treatment at any cost, but that is my sensible, objective view.

If I could afford to pay the debt off and pay for everything I'd need if IVF was successful and I had a baby then I'd go for it.

Hard one. Having serious trouble conceiving isn't a position I've been in, so it's very hard (impossible?) to say.

But, I don't think I would do it. I think I'd see if I could adopt. But, if I was actually in the situation, well, who knows.

I would do this in a heartbeat if it was my only chance of having a child.

We remortgaged our house for £15k four years ago to pay for three rounds of IVF.

We were desperate . No time to save, the younger you are the more chance you have of success and I was already 33.

Would not do it if I already had a child/children though.

Spongebrain, did it work or is that too personal a question?

As mumgenius - I would happily get into debt if I knew that day to day I lived within my means and would continue to beable to do so with one income etc after child was born. And that I had a plan to pay debt off quite quickly. If not, no - especially if I already had one child.

Absolutely not. I can't conceive of any circumstances where I would subject myself to IVF, no matter how desperately I wanted a biological child. Even if the IVF was free even if I was paid to go thru it I would not do it.

Sorry, should have said - all three rounds worked but we lost first two to m/c. We had our first son in June 2008, and then amazingly fell pg naturally and had our second son last October.

It was worth every bloody penny .

Awwww, that is lovely. Congratuolations spongebrain.

All depends on how much we're talking about really. There is no way I'd get into real debt for a car. Not when you can pick up perfectly OK ones for a few hundred quid. I would however borrow £10k for IVF. If anyone was foolish enough to give me gredit that is...

emsyj - it is perfectly easy to reach one's mid-30s with no savings, particularly if you've had to stretch youself madly in order to put a fairly modest roof over your heads.

if I had a plan for paying it off without crippling the family finances then probably yes. In this instance better than saving for it & then being too old to stand much of a chance...

Have you considered egg sharing? Not everyone's cup of tea I know, but someone I know (not well, but she's full-on at telling people stuff!) donated half her eggs and got her IVF at much reduced cost, otherwise they would have struggled to afford it. Both her & the lady she donated to got pregnant too, which was the icing on the cake Just thought I'd mention it in case you hadn't thought of it (you might be too "old" for "sharing" already, I don't know if they have age limits for that sort of stuff)

Cantsupinate - have you actually been in that position? We said exactly the same thing as you, but when we sat in the consultant's office and were told my tubes were completely blocked and our only chance of our own baby was IVF we changed our minds in a heartbeat.

You can't say what you would do until you've been there . . .

Thanks Ghouls .

No question, would definitely do it.

GhoulsAreLoud - hadn't considered that. No, I wouldn't spend thousands on IVF is I had a child already. Unless I was loaded of course.

Age limit for egg sharing is 35.

That's a tough one to answer. I guess those of us lucky enough to have kids through IVF would say that it's worth every penny. The cold hard facts are though, that you still need to be able to afford to raise a child afterwards. And of course it may never work.

I would say, yes the chance for a child is worth getting into a manageable amount of debt if you're able to pay it back. The hardest part can be to have the strength to decide how many cycles you can realistically afford and to stop after that if you get there and it still hasn't worked.