RESOLVE's Family Building Conference Part 3...Budgeting for Infertility

We were able to meet Dr. Evelina Sterling, co-author of the book Budgeting for Infertility. She immediately caught our attention in her class when she mentioned that it was nominated for the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. 

Omg. Really? Lol hard.

What's so funny about budgeting for infertility? Read more about it here.

This is a prime example of how uneducated the public is on infertility. This is exactly why infertility is such a taboo subject. Exactly why we are isolated from the rest of society.

I cannot remember for the life of me where I read the following analogy, but please take credit if this was from your blog. I don't like to steal without asking! It was said that infertility is like an STD. It's a complete no-no to talk to you about, but everybody wants to discuss it behind your back. I'm glad that I'm pretty open about it now...you ask questions and I don't mind giving you answers. I'm not as ashamed about it anymore. However, I do have good days and bad...sometimes I feel like talking about it, and sometimes I wish it would all go away. It usually depends on what day of my cycle I'm on! Like today. Hello Aunt Flo. For the 89203948579th time. Can't you just stay away for 9 measly little months? Is that so much to ask? ;)

This blog has saved my frickin' sanity and has served as a creative outlet for all of the ***jibba jabba that accumulates in my head.

What was I talking about? Budgeting. Sorryyyyy.

Anyway, I haven't read this book yet, but it is on the way from Ebay. Found it for 99 cents...score! Dr. Sterling gave us insight to many foundations that offer grants for infertility treatments as well as clinical trials that are sometimes offered for a nice discount. There are also several pharmaceutical assistance programs that offer discount and free medications. Of course, there are strict criteria that have to be met with most of these. All of the information on how to gain access to these resources is in this book.

I'm just going to bullet some of the highlights from the class that I found interesting:

• Infertility is a disease that affects an estimated 7.3 million Americans. This number only reflects the number of people that actually come forward to pursue treatment. It is a huge problem and is a lot more common than people think. 

• As I mentioned in my last post, only about 15 States mandate infertility insurance coverage. Did you know that it is more expensive to break your leg and go to the ER than it is to do a cycle of IVF? Every person in the country with an insurance policy could fall and break their leg and it would be covered in some way. On the other hand, 1 in 6 couples will need fertility treatments to conceive a child and less than ten percent of insurance policies will help pay for it. The challenge is getting insurance companies to accept that infertility is an actual disease, which it exactly is. If your kidneys don't function/filter correctly, you have kidney disease. If your reproductive system doesn't function correctly, be it endometriosis/PCOS/endocrine issues, you have infertility. Also, if people didn't have to worry about the financial strain of treatments, then they wouldn't be begging their doctors to put in 5 embryos as a last ditch effort to have a child. For example, IVF would be better regulated and would only result in 1 embryo being transferred which would result in a lower cost overall. Ugh, I could just go on and on about this.

• So far, infertility coverage has been left out of the new health care bill. We will just have to wait a little longer to see how it will all play out. Obviously, there are a lot of uncertainties with this new bill.

I also found this video by Dr. Sterling herself! She addresses the ten most common mistakes that people make when budgeting for infertility. The video is kind of shaky, but delivers a good message.



I'm just really interested to get my hands on this book and I hope that it will provide us with some more valuable information. I encourage all of my blog peeps to check it out too!

*** "Quit yo' jibba jabba, fool."   ~Mr. T
Just thought I'd throw that in there.