The money side of things

[thislittlebird]

I’m feeling so stressed today about how much this has cost us to date and how much it still might cost. We’ve got a complicated immunological infertility case between the two of us, we’re now both almost over 40.

Our first cycle was NHS funded, our second was private but a complete disaster, and our third was private but good and we have a couple of embryos to transfer yet. We’ve spent a lot between private cycles, meds and three years of tests. But I know I have repeat implantation failure and we need a few more attempts trying different protocols before we throw in the towel. Obviously one of those transfers could work but I really can’t see that happening, we’ve never had the odds fall in our favour to date when it comes to transfers so I’m sat here planning how to fund another one to two cycles.

It’s just so depressing, we’re average earners and lucky we have an affordable mortgage or none of this would be possible. I’m not sure how fast we’ll manage to save what we need, but when time isn’t on your side it adds yet another layer of stress and life is just on hold while we save for ivf constantly.

@thislittlebird it's so hard. We are about £30k deep. It's a fortune. I think you just have to have an end point that you agree on together. You do need to be positive though; you still have embryos left to transfer xx

@thislittlebird I know the money side of things is another level of stress ontop of emotional and physical stuff. We did 9 IVFs, 2 FETs, many IUIs, and had donor sperm cost as gay. I think we ended up around £50k and after 3 miscarriages have our son. It’s a lot to go through. We put money on credit cards. I managed to pay mine back as I pay less towards the mortgage. My partner moved the debt around across cards which is risky I know. Actually when covid happened she didn’t commute to London and it was the money saved not commuting which cleared her credit card debit. I really don’t know when it would have been paid off if it wasn't for this! Also some clinics offer payment programs so you don’t pay all at once. We did this for our last 3 cycle package which helped us save some from pay checks between payments if that makes sense. There are also some companies which offer financing packages for ivf. I forget which but I saw one at the London Fertiity show.

Hi can I join
i have had 2 failed cycles here in the uk
have just looked into reprofit in chech republic x

@CR7 yeah I know I should be, just hard to see a different outcome, we've already had six embryos fail. We've spent something like 25k I think, and we're not done yet, it's just crazy money and we mostly do it all in silence because it's such a difficult topic.

@muldr4scly love your username btw! When you say 9, is that egg collections? I don't know the cost of donor, but I'm guessing it's also extortionate. Similarly, the working from home and saving on transport costs helped us immensely too. Lockdown era was a really key time for us for saving and I'm grateful for it. We had a package for the last two cycles but ended up with quite a bit more on top in tests and add ons after our second cycle went dreadfully. We may end up paying for a package again, eventually, just so we have a back up if another one goes to hell.

@Stiltrying welcome! It's such an expensive process when it doesn't work. I can understand going to CZ if it's cheaper.

They also have really good success rates
we paid the 500 fee to my ivf journey. And I am in the process off having new scans and blood tests before they come up with a plan and a price x

@thislittlebird Haha I created my username when I was 16 and it stayed with me. I had 8 egg collections. I did 6 IVFs in Norway. Once we changed the protocol there to try menopur instead of gonal f and I went on the pill. My body reacted badly to this as never been on the pill before and bleeding didn’t stop so follicules didn’t grow so that egg collection was cancelled and became an IUI. I did 3 IVFs in the UK as when covid happened we couldn’t travel to Norway. In hindsight we probably should have tried a different clinic earlier and glad we had that push. I did a 3 cycle package at Create Fertiity. You can do back to back rounds and since I had turned 43 I wanted to get them done. Unfortunately I was rundown from the second cycle so we had to cancel the second months try and try the third month with second round. It was mild ivf so you aim for the one good egg. I knew statistically from my earlier rounds that 1 in 3 embryos were any good. As it turns out we got 1 from the first round and nothing from the last 2. We feel what was key was the aftercare. Our Norway clinic did not have a uk satellite clinic so you are kinda left to pregnancy test and that’s it. Create fertility for an extra cost checked progesterone level at transfer and then soon after positive result and level dropped despite crinone gel. I needed extra progesterone. I really think their monitoring and follow up is what made our pregnancy last.

Donor sperm has almost doubled in cost since we started. Many things are extra eg contactable donor, photos, extended donor profile, adult photos (didn’t bother with this). We had more fees to ship to uk than Norway. It seems ridiculous but an ivf round in Norway (scans, egg collection, egg transfer, not meds) was less than the cost of the sperm. I think our Norway clinic costs have gone up since we last used them. They had a deal with a hotel, great rates for medication with fertility 2u (better than uk clinics who use them) so even with flying etc it was less than UK rounds for us at the time…plus I love Norway.

Great that you were able to save on commute costs during covid too!