This is National Infertility Awareness Week.

The title of this post is the percent of people in the USA who are experiencing infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss. If you've been reading this journal for a while you know I have experienced both. If you haven't been around you can click on the fertilicoaster or IVF tags in my sidebar and read all the riveting details.

In any case, folks are posting to let everyone know the insane cost of fertility treatments and how much they spent. I personally believe that since infertility is a treatable condition, a disease, that the medical procedures needed should be covered by health insurance policies. Mine were not. If it weren't for a generous gift from my amazingly wonderful in-laws I would not be pregnant right now.

So - how much did it cost?
Our insurance covers "treatment and testing for infertility, excluding alternative reproductive technologies." Roughly translated, this means they will pay for you to find out WHY you can't get pregnant but then they won't pay one penny to help you get that way. Unless you have a condition such as endometriosis or PCOS and then they will pay to treat that - but not to get you knocked up directly. For me, this means that my two HSGs were covered, as were many many blood tests to make certain that my repeat miscarriages were not due to a genetic or hormonal problem. We spent probably $50 on co-pays for those tests. At that point we knew that we could keep throwing sperm up there but that most likely my pathetic scarred up right side tube was not functioning and all those swimmers were perishing in my uterus somewhere. We knew that our best chance was IVF, not only that but that I was (am?) an ideal candidate for IVF. My infertility is mechanical and I am young.

Ok - so hold your breath cause the money involved is insane.

~$1900 went to do sperm things. Washing. Testing our donor for STDs. Freezing. Storage. All of that. This would not have cost nearly as much if the FDA did not have stupid stupid rules about known sperm donors which caused us to be basically unable to do fresh cycles with our known donor.
~$2000 went for the drugs for the cancelled IVF. The one where I only had a few follicles and we converted to an IUI at the last minute.
~$2800 went for the blood and ultrasound monitoring for the IUI.
~$700 paid for that IUI. This included "frozen sperm handling." I guess those guys are feisty when you thaw 'em out.
~$2800 went for the drugs for the actual IVF cycle.
$9000 was the base price for our IVF cycle. This included the blood and ultrasound monitoring, the egg retrieval, the embryologist, the embryo transfer and the first blood pregnancy test.
~$200 went for a second blood pregnancy test, which our insurance considers part of the IVF cycle. WTF??

That is a total of $19,400. Enough said.