In our situation, we had zero infertility coverage through our health insurance plan, so these numbers are mainly OOP(out of pocket) costs. I’m sure the charges will vary from place to place, but at least it will give you a starting point to get an idea of costs! Also, I have not included our insurance premium costs, which were about $200/month for me during the TTC saga (an additional cost of $4,200 of premiums, and I did not have maternity coverage).
Wondering where to start? Buy these two books!
Taking Charge of Your Fertility: $16.50 (#1 book I recommend for TTCers)
The Infertility Cure: $12.50 (#2 book I recommend for TTCers – great Eastern Medicine info)
First Year of TTC (july09/july10): $1,500
(back when some tests were still covered by copays/insurance and we were trying naturally or with Clomid)
HPTs & OPKs: $183
Pre-natal vitamins / herbs / TTC books / Clomid / etc. : $245
Acupuncture: $370
Diagnostic Bloodwork (prolactin, DHEA, TSH, & testosterone), 1 ultrasound, & Hubby’s SA: $677
Next 6 months of TTC (july10/jan11): $1,250
TTC naturally – weekly acupuncture + herbs, and one P4 check
Diagnostic Work with my RE (feb11/mar11): $2,500
$250 – Initial Consult
$100 – Regroup with RE after test results were back
$125 – Prometrium to end cycles (copay)
$110 – Acupuncture & Chiropractor Appt
$100 – glucose tolerance test
$500 – CD3 bloodwork (FSH/LH/AMH/E2)
$20 – misc. bloodwork (copay) (CBC/DHEA/blood type/etc)
$270 – Semen Analysis & ASAB panel
$360 – baseline ultrasound
$15 – Antibiotics for HSG (copay)
$575 – HSG
$125 – fuel cost for our trip to Denver
We did not pay $200 for the nurse consult (it was waived for some reason) and we also didn’t pay for the genetic consult (which I believe was also supposed to be $200).
We also did not do the following tests, but I’ll include them FYI.
$170 – Cystic Fibrosis test
$285 – Fragile X test
$350 – Spinal Atrophy test
IUI#1 with RE (mar11/apr11): $5,250
$100 – ovidrel trigger shot co-pay
$1,315 – Ultrasounds (5 of them)
Make sure you ask what they’re going to charge. My local OB clinic charged a different rate (more) for a trans-vaginal u/s than a regular one, and when I had to use the local hospital’s u/s machine for a weekend check, they charged me over DOUBLE what my OB clinic charged ($451 vs $221). Since none of this was covered by insurance, I should have paid cash up front for the 10% discount, but I wasn’t thinking straight to request that. Ugh.
$1,550 Monitoring Blood work
E2 was $142/draw
P4 was $80/draw
LH was $60/draw
HCG was $95/draw
Blood draw charge was $7-10/day
$170 – Acupuncture: Two appointments – I actually wanted to do more during this cycle, but my schedule just wasn’t meshing with it.
$700 – Sperm wash, freeze, and CBC panel – We had to do this b/c my husband was out of state for work during my IUI cycle. $340 for the freeze and $360 the required CBC panel.
$175 – Sperm wash and IUI prep -I’m not sure if this cost is there whether you do the freeze/thaw process or not.
$125 – IUI procedure – The cheapest part of the whole ordeal!
$300 – fuel charges for monitoring appts, etc.
$65 – (prometrium supplements) – My co-pay is super high for this for some reason – $3/pill. Luckily a bloggie friend filled her prescription for me and sent it to me for $0.67/pill instead. Insurance is so stupid.
$25 – HPTs – I couldn’t resist testing early…and then testing again with the ones that actually say “pregnant.” Worth every penny. :- )
$50 – Zofran – Once the pharmacy finally figured out I could get 12 pills for $2/time, it’s gotten cheaper. At first they were giving me 14 pills for $10.
We were traveling 350 miles (one way!) to the RE for the diagnostic work and actual IUI, and I didn’t include the cost of eating out, etc. while we were in Denver each time. I’m sure that added several hundred dollars minimum to our total cost, but I just didn’t want to think about it so I didn’t track it. 🙂 Luckily we had free places to stay with family/friends, so we didn’t have to pay for lodging.
Overall, in our 21 months of TTC, we spent roughly $10,500.
Obviously, we were extremely lucky to have our first IUI result in a BFP, and if you move on to IVF, the costs skyrocket from there. So many of you have spent 10s of thousands, and my heart goes out to you. Still, $10k is no small chunk of change to us, especially when the vast majority of it was spent in the last couple of months. Phew.
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