Question from Katie

Ok, folks - not too many questions out there - just two, but at least that gives me two days of blogging. Feel free to ask away though - we'd love to answer...

This question is from Katie who said, "I don't know if this is too personal, but I'm just wondering if you've considered a surrogate or something of that nature."

Not too personal at all- and here is the answer

A surrogate is EXPENSIVE.....so is IVF - and we do not have insurance coverage for IVF or the procedure for harvesting my eggs that would be needed if we used a surrogate. We simply don't have the money for that.

So, how have we done all of these IUI cycles on injectibles you may ask? Well, my insurance covers most of that. We found a bit of a loophole where my insurance covers the meds and monitoring. They will cover bloodwork and ultrasounds that are used for "monitoring" my condition, but they will NOT cover the IUI. If we submit an IUI to the insurance company, they will stop paying for all the monitoring, etc.

So, in some strange way, we get the majority of an IUI cycle covered. We only have to pay for the sperm and the IUI out of pocket. This runs us about $550 for a cycle with everything else covered. When you look at the fact that the insurance company pays around $4500 for a cycle, we get off pretty easy.

Now, I have to think that if they would have covered IVF, they probably would have out of this for a lot cheaper - I figure that the insurance company has paid out between $45,000 - $50,000 since we started TTC..

So, we just keep plugging away with our IUIs because we don't really have another option financially.