If you are, or have, struggled with infertility I am here to tell you YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Lots of people silently struggle with infertility as they battle the immense knowledge gap and the insane prices. I personally ended up having to go through IVF and it was a whirlwind to say the least. Infertility and IVF are HUGE topics that are under discussed and under severed and therefore I try to be an open book to all who need advice or support. I will try to condense some of the information I have gained about the general IVF/ Infertility journey from my perspective.
Price/Insurance
Do you or your partner have insurance that covers fertility treatments? If so, you are one of the lucky ones! Not all states require fertility coverage and not all companies offer it either. I, for example, had zero fertility coverage and had to pay out of pocket. So check with your insurance benefits before you do anything!
If you do not have insurance coverage, you will want to shop around to gauge the prices of treatment. Not all clinics are the same, some offer large packages that include multiple treatments and others have lower prices than competitors. It’s really up to you where you go, but just know that you don’t have to go through the clinic you were referred to. Shop around and find what suits you best.
Like me, you might find that clinics in your area are just simply SO expensive and out of your price range. If that’s the case, you can travel for IVF! After extensive searching, I finally found a clinic that had good reviews, affordable prices, and a travel team. This clinic was CNY Fertility and I chose to go to their CO location and flew from WA. I compared prices and found that this clinic was roughly HALF of what I anticipated paying in my local area. Traveling for treatment ended up being the smartest decision I could have made. Keep reading and see more information on traveling for IVF.
The Usual Process
You can expect to start the fertility journey with the “least invasive” procedures first. But let’s be real… Infertility treatments are about as invasive as they get. You would probably start with Letrozole and timed intercourse, then do several rounds of IUI before finally ending up doing IVF.
Testing
In order to start treatments you will have to get some testing done. This includes blood work to check hormone levels and ultrasounds to visualize your internal structures. Some of the internal things they are looking for are an appropriate uterine lining thickness, fibroids, scar tissue, or blocked tubes. These tests give your treatment team a baseline in which they can cater your treatment plan. The testing can be time consuming, costly, and slightly uncomfortable, but having your little bundle of joy will make it all worth it!
IUI
Intra Uterine Insemination. This process involves getting a semen sample from a partner or donor, spinning it down to get a very concentrated sperm sample and then inserting this directly into the uterus. This process is reliant on the woman ovulating, usually with the help of medications which can also increase the chances of the body dropping more than 1 egg during ovulation. The insertion of the “washed” sperm directly into the uterus assists the sperm in reaching the ovulated egg. Usually you would do several rounds of IUI before moving on to IVF.
IVF
In Vitro Fertilization. This process involves collecting eggs from the woman and a semen sample from the partner, combining the egg and sperm outside the body, then several days later placing the embryo back into the uterus. This is the most invasive method and is very time consuming, physically and mentally taxing, as well as pricey. If you are doing IVF there is a good chance you have tried all other options available to you, or you have a significant infertility factor that rocketed you directly to IVF. For my husband and I, we went straight to IVF due to our significant infertility factor and skipped trying IUI altogether.
Traveling for IVF
Tricks of the Trade
- Here’s a little trick I learned. If you’re even thinking you might be doing IVF soon, schedule your consultations now and to several different clinics. Sometimes it can take MONTHS to get in for your consultation at your preferred clinic and that wait (after you’ve already been trying for so long) can feel like it takes forever. So do yourself a favor and make a few consultations now so that you get the consolations done sooner rather than later. Then when you’re ready to move forward with any process, wether it’s IUI or IVF, you don’t have to wait.
- If you cannot afford IVF in your area, travel! There are clinics all around the country that help clients travel to their location for the big procedures like the egg removal and embryo transfer. I used CNY Fertility and they have several locations to choose from. They have a travel team that helps coordinate your specific care from afar. It gets a bit more difficult because you have to do the leg work of finding a location for lab work and ultrasounds, but it is doable I promise! If I could do it, so can you! Here is a little draft of how it works:
- Go online and find more affordable clinics that promote they can cater to travel clients.
- Schedule your consultation sooner rather than later because clinics are usually pretty booked out.
- While your waiting for your consultation date, start researching local clinics or labs in which you can get lab work done with a written order from your chosen fertility clinic, and a location that can do Ultrasound monitoring. For me, I chose to use Lab Corp for my labs, and I found a small private owned Women’s clinic, First Step Fertility, that would do my ultrasound tests and monitoring. If you are having a hard time finding a clinic to do your ultrasounds, call some of your local fertility clinics and ask if they will do the monitoring for you. If they won’t sometimes they have a lead on somewhere that will. This is how I found my clinic! Some locations will do both bloodwork and ultrasounds! Once you’ve found your potential monitoring places, write them down so you can use later.
- Once you’ve had your consultation you will have a whole slew of things to do before you can start all the meds. You will need blood work, ultrasounds, and a plan for travel.
- Make sure you look up safe travel with your injections/syringes before you make it to the airport. I messaged my clinic and they sent me a doctors note verifying I was allowed to travel with all the supplies needed. Some of the medications you travel with need to be kept cold, so you need to travel with coolers, Ice packs, etc. Make sure the ice packs are easy for TSA to get to and inspect because the thick liquid/gel packs will most likely be flagged and searched. I used the sealed thermal bags that the meds shipped to me in, and TSA literally ripped open the packages to inspect the ice packs! I was very nervous about my meds warming up to say the least, but it all worked out okay.
Conclusion
Traveling for IVF is doable and so worth it if you cannot afford the prices in your area! It seems so overwhelming thinking about having to fly or drive somewhere for something so important and timely; However, the clinic I used (CNY Fertility) made it soooo easy to travel for treatment AND they have payment plans.
