Previous: Infertility Part 13: Fertility Clinic!

Warning: I do my fair share of venting in this one. I wrote this during a period of immense financial stress and frustration. This is part of the reality of infertility that many people just don’t even realize or think about. I will not apologize for the feelings I had/have, but please know that I hold no ill feelings towards those who have never dealt with this type of money stress. We all need to vent sometimes and feel our feelings, and this is just that.

In May 2022, we found out we had a very unexpected bill of $4000 to pay off. This meant that our baby making fund took a huge hit, and it was extremely depressing.

To all those people out there who keep saying things like “God is just challenging us by giving us infertility”, or saying that “this is a good thing to go through” for whatever reason, or “it’ll all be worth it in the end”, I would like to remind you that this is not a blessing in any way. It sucks. I know that people try to help by finding a positive, but by saying those things immediately, all you effectively do is completely dismiss the feelings of the one dealing with the problem.

Most people just get to have a baby and figure out how to afford it after that. They don’t have to spend THOUSANDS of dollars just to CONCEIVE the baby in the first place (or go through several surgeries!!). That is not a blessing. Feeling depressed that you can’t afford to create a baby is not a blessing. It’s not fun. We have already established a fund to go towards creating a baby, and any unexpected bill is a massive reminder that at any moment we may not be able to afford to purchase sperm, or go through the medical procedure to implant that sperm.

Every time we choose to buy anything, it’s a reminder that we might be one step further behind on our goals. We don’t live an extravagant life, but it got much leaner than it was because while millions of people are out there just living their life getting pregnant with no costs at all, here we are trying to figure out how to save money to afford roughly $2400 PER MONTH to TRY to get pregnant. I don’t know how to do this, and I am furious that in the blink of an eye we just lost 2.5 months of that goal. That’s 2.5 less attempts at a baby if i’m being emotional. Or at least 6 months of a savings delay, if I am being reasonable.

Just keep adding money and time onto the pile. Why not? What “blessing” could possibly come next? And don’t forget….if we want a second child we get to do this all over again while also figuring out how to afford the actual cost of the baby that will hopefully be in our lives.

Many other places in Canada and across the world have varying degrees of infertility coverage. Unfortunately our province and health plans don’t have coverage for infertility procedures or donor sperm. I also don’t want anyone to have to pay for my body not working properly and I certainly don’t want to incur debt. So that’s left with saving, saving, saving. I was thankful to have been able to work overtime at work for most of 2022, but unfortunately that overtime didn’t last forever, so there’s no way to keep saving at the rate that we were. All that money went straight into the baby makin’ fund but it’s hard to know what exactly is going to be enough.

Will the first IUI procedure work? The second? Will we have twins and be done? Will everything fail and we need to look into IVF which is immensely more expensive? Nobody knows! But we also have to keep living our lives and enjoying ourselves along the way instead of keeping every penny.

I know that after 1.5 years of saving, we still couldn’t afford an IVF procedure at all. Nowhere close in fact. So here’s hoping we won’t need to get to that point. Because if we do, all the previous money would have already been spent on IUI procedures and we would be left starting at the very beginning all over again, needing to save for 3 more years just to try again. And this is for 2 incredibly privileged people with good jobs. My heart breaks for those who are in a much worse scenario than we are.

Please don’t leave this post thinking we are depressed, or broke, or distraught. Instead, please just know this is part of the stress that comes along with this diagnosis and somehow you have to manage it right alongside all the other feelings that keep mounting. We’ll be okay and while I do believe that if we end up with a child, it will have been worth the effort, that doesn’t mean it gives anyone the right to dismiss that effort in the middle of it when we are actively feeling the weight of all that financial pressure on top of the emotions.

Next: Infertility Part 15: Final Diagnosis