DE treatment using Access Fertility

[Leezo]

So I've found myself exploring using DE in the middle of a Global Pandemic and living in Northern Ireland - not one if my brightest ideas but none the less, here we are!. Long story short, 42 with a good enough AMH for my age but seemingly crappy egg quality - 5 failed natural pregnancies between 5 and 10 weeks. Last pregnancy was roughly 18months ago so I would safely say I'm making the right decision with DE. Living in NI we have very few options, especially in a Pandemic situation so we have no choice but to travel to mainland UK for treatment. We do not have finite finance resources as I'm sure many of you we agree so we would like to give ourselves the best fighting chance. I have contacted access fertility who have been extremely helpful and we are looking into 2 clinics - Manchester Fertility and Care Liverpool. My question is 3 fold really - can anyone recommend or review any of these clinics? Has anyone incurred any 'hidden' charges using these clinics or Access Fertility? Also would we be better shelling out the big bucks for a 100% 3 cycle refund to play it safe? It's a total minefield, it's so confusing!TIA

Hello!
We used access fertility with donor sperm. No hidden fees as such but get a clear breakdown from your clinic what it doesn't cover. For us it was:
Initial consultation £400
Initial blood tests £450
All medication - £1600 per round
Donor sperm £870 a round
ICSI if needed was an extra £1,255 but if you know you need it access can give you a package to cover it. They don't expect to need it with donor sperm but they said it depended on the thaw.
Endometrial scratch was £300 (we didn't have it)

However it covered the whole treatment otherwise! We did the 2 cycle package (£6,800) with unlimited transfers from each round as we knew we wanted to draw a line under it after that.

Very annoying you have to travel to england for treatment, the private clinics seem to be operating here fairly normally. I used simply fertility in Essex which is about 40mins from stansted if that's of interest. Good luck with your journey!

@SteffieIUI hey thank you so much for your reply! Through research it seems that different procedures either are or aren't covered by access fertility at different clinics so we'll just have to be on the ball! Donated eggs are hard to come by in NI, a lot of the clinics partner with the likes of Alicante which we were just about to sign on the dotted line with before travel restrictions Southern Ireland would have been perfect for us but our clinic down there has paused DE programmes as they can no longer get DE from their partner clinic in the Ukraine. If it's not too sensitive a question, were you successful in your journey? Were you happy with your clinic choice? Would you do anything differently if you had to do the whole journey again? Apologies for being so forward, I'm just trying to get as much information as possible before we take that leap!

I don't know much about DE but we had the sperm shipped from a clinic in Denmark to the clinic, can the same not happen with DE?
It's so difficult with Covid isn't it and all the latest restrictions. we got very lucky as we had 2 unsuccessful rounds of IUI in London at the start of 2020. Then lockdown and we reassessed and decided on IVF as I am 38 and donor sperm is expensive. We chose a more local clinic as soon as they reopened. I used that time to stop drinking, eat healthy and took all the supplements going from this book "it starts with the egg" - highly recommend it.
We had our first appointment at new clinic in June and egg retrieval happened in August. We had an amazing yield of good quality embryos which was a surprise to all. First transfer failed but we went back 2 months later and got pregnant with the first frozen transfer. I'm 16 weeks now all going well!
For us the hardest part was choosing the donor, it took a long time and it was slim pickings. We decided to wait as nothing we really liked. My partner has zero sperm and he wanted a donor he could relate to. We're also very similar looking so we're quite restricted on eye and hair colour. We will always be open about the donor aspect but we didn't want to draw attention by having a brown hair/brown eyes child when we are both fair and my child from previous relationship is very fair too.
I used to check the sperm banks every day and our donor popped up one day and we just knew straightaway but it was about 5 months waiting!
The counselling offered through the clinics was really good. I have read "three makes baby" and follow the author on social media. The donor side of it needs a lot of thought on how your going to deal with it all.
Happy to answer any questions! X

Leezo you might get reviews of the specific clinics (but possibly not the donor aspect) by asking in the Infertility section.

If you could be based near your clinic of choice in an Airbnb it would probably be safer than a hotel from a covid perspective if you could do a supermarket shop or have an online delivery.

Not sure if you would fly or get the ferry but if you do fly my clinic are really insistent that any medication goes in hand luggage due to lower temperatures in the hold. They give a letter to show at airport security.
If you get the ferry you will have your own car which may be an advantage.

@SteffieIUI congratulations, glad you said counselling was useful, I've had good sessions with an implications counsellor to think things through.

@SteffieIUI wow congratulations!! I'm so pleased for you! I haven't really thought much about the donor up to now it's all been more about the logistics - we are both fair too so maybe that may hold things back a bit for us, who knows. We had spoken about it and as we wanted things to move quite quickly we were going to plump for frozen eggs as they would be there waiting in the bank and there's little faff with trying to sync cycles but it appears with access fertility they offer fresh so, again logistically living in a different country and this calls for more appointments, it may be more tricky for us. We have telephone 121 appointments with both clinics in 2 weeks so hopefully we will be better placed to make a decision then. Thank you for recommending the books, i will defo be ordering them up!
@PinkGold thank you so much for your advise - I will be lurking over on the infertility section now! I think you are also right about Airbnb, cheaper and definitely feel safer from a Covid perspective. I would definitely prefer to go by ferry, to limit contact. To be honest, I'm not even sure what the regulations are in reference to travel for Fertility treatment this may all be our in the sky until post Covid....

[quote Leezo]@SteffieIUI wow congratulations!! I'm so pleased for you! I haven't really thought much about the donor up to now it's all been more about the logistics - we are both fair too so maybe that may hold things back a bit for us, who knows. We had spoken about it and as we wanted things to move quite quickly we were going to plump for frozen eggs as they would be there waiting in the bank and there's little faff with trying to sync cycles but it appears with access fertility they offer fresh so, again logistically living in a different country and this calls for more appointments, it may be more tricky for us. We have telephone 121 appointments with both clinics in 2 weeks so hopefully we will be better placed to make a decision then. Thank you for recommending the books, i will defo be ordering them up!
@PinkGold thank you so much for your advise - I will be lurking over on the infertility section now! I think you are also right about Airbnb, cheaper and definitely feel safer from a Covid perspective. I would definitely prefer to go by ferry, to limit contact. To be honest, I'm not even sure what the regulations are in reference to travel for Fertility treatment this may all be our in the sky until post Covid....[/quote]
Thank you we have been so lucky. Hopefully once you have chosen a clinic the rest of the process will become easier for you. I'm kinda shocked that you may need fresh eggs! As donor sperm is always frozen! That's a logistical nightmare surely?! I'm not sure eggs freeze as well as sperm so that might be it?

Hi all,

Could anyone possibly share Access Fertility's T&C's, please?

The reason I am asking is that they could not provide us the T&C before we would have done the initial consultation and the initial screening at the clinic, and that's effectively already paying-out substantial sums of money, without even being able to know whether Access Fertility's T&C would suit us.

I have got Assured Fertility's T&C and they actually mention that if you have two miscarriages, then they kick-you out of the plan and don't refund the retail cost of any procedures already performed. Given my wife has a history of miscarriage, that's a no go for us. I wanted to check for the same clause in Access Fertility's T&C but they won't send us one without us having started the process already, and paid out some money (as mentioned above).

Many thanks,