The Journey - It Costs WHAT? (Part 3 of 3)

Who among us has been in the situation of opening a menu and there are no prices listed? I know I have been. Immediately your heart falls into your stomach and you wonder if Citibank will let a few extra dollars slide onto your card. You know that you have entered the "If you have to ask, you can't afford it" zone, and are quite possibly set up for a very uncomfortable evening. Now multiply that feeling by 10 and you have an idea of what it feels like to get the ACRM "fertility menu".

A more appropriate acronym would be BABY, as in Bank Account Barren Yet? At least the menu is itemized. You can see how much it costs to clean your sperm, harvest an egg, or just buy one off of the black market. Just kidding about the black market thing, don't need an unnecessary law suit! Besides, I am pretty sure I signed a non-disclosure statement about that part. The bad part about the itemized list is that the prices don't look to bad on their own. Until you add all the little pieces up.

Just like the monthly trip to Publix adds up so does baby creation. "What do you mean the grocery bill was $312.98! The most expensive thing in the two carts was $6.78." Then you realize that it takes a lot of groceries to make dinner every night. Well so does IVF (In Vitro Fertilization). Imagine that you got to the checkout line and the bill is $20,000. PER MONTH of trying, and you have to do it every month until you conceive or give up. You would probably have the same reaction I did.

After the paramedics picked me up off the floor and I regained my color I had some questions. What is the chance that we will be successful on the first try? What are the side effects of the medicines Emilee will have to take? How many months does it usually take? Why don't I just take the 20k and run to Europe? I hear that you can have a great time in Bratislava for that kind of money. I was really shocked when I got smacked in the head by Emilee; apparently I had thought that last question out loud. But the doc had answers for all of it, and I did not like any of them.

We had it explained to us that there is about a 20% chance of conception and implantation for the first month. But good news, it goes up to 55% by your third attempt! So 60 grand in and I have worse odds than if I went and played the pass line on a Craps table. Plus, we could have a GREAT time in Vegas on $60,000. I mean think of all the food, shows, show girls... Ok, so not show girls, but you get the point. I mean I'm 38 and I really did not want a payment on a Porche Boxster and not have anything to show for it. So we decided to try something a little more cost effective first.

We tried Intra Uterine Insemination. We (Emilee) gets a bunch of shots and wand ultrasounds until they figure out when she is going to ovulate. So we nail the day she is going to spring an egg free, and just for good measure they give her a "trigger" shot to GUARANTEE that she ovulates the next day. We go in the next morning, and because I did not have 'Noid's insurance, I had to collect a sample for them to wash and insert. We go home and marinate and hope for the best. A week later Emilee goes in for the big news right? WRONG! She NEVER ovulated! So that was a happy $4,000 dollars spent to not even have the chance to get pregnant.

You can probably imagine our disappointment. We had tried everything up to the point of drilling into her ovaries for oil and nothing had worked. We were now over $8,000 in to the process and had nothing to show for it except that I now knew how to "collect a sample" standing up. No way in Hades I was sitting on anything in that room! Anyway, we were devastated. Emilee suggested we take a break and look at all of our other options. We even started to look at adoption because we figured if we were going to have to pay $50,000 to $100,000 for a baby we might as well know what we were getting.

As a last ditch effort Emilee started going to an acupuncturist. I was all for it. The 1.5 billion Chinese must have been doing something right for 5,000 years. I even pictured the little old man with the long flowing kung-fu beard and the little Confucian temple. So when I dropped her off at a house in Alpharetta and she was met by a 40 something white lady I was a little disappointed. We definitely were not disappointed with the results though. Six weeks after starting we were pregnant. Emilee even half way fondly remembers the herbal teas that she had to drink. I give her a lot of credit, most of them tasted like feet.

So you are up to speed now on how we made it to this point. We are both happy to answer any questions anyone may have about the process. It made us stronger as a couple and I hope makes us stronger as a family in the long run. By the way, where is Bratislava?


Stay Safe,

Rob