Hey guys, it’s Sheila. Welcome back to my channel. Today, I’m here to share with you a cost comparison on what we have spent so far in 2022 on both IUI treatments as well as an IVF egg retrieval. Make sure you guys are subscribed to my channel if you are new here, because I will be sharing more of my fertility journey. Also, I do want to say thank you to the sponsor of today’s video, which is Cupidbaby.com. If you guys are trying to get pregnant, I would highly recommend trying at home insemination if that is a possibility for you, because it is going to be way more cost effective, as you guys are about to see.
Um, and also what I think is even more important is that it is less invasive and it’s just an overall more comfortable experience if you can achieve your desired result in the comfort of your own home. And what I really think is cool about Cupid baby is that it was founded by a nurse who had struggled herself with using other at-home insemination products, so she decided to create a one-step easy, user-friendly process for you to be able to achieve results at home. Now, her process is really cool because it’s only one step and this method uniquely saves sperm, so using this method, you stop sperm waste. There’s no need for a condom, you don’t have to purchase any outside collection cups, because literally the Cupid is the collection cup. So, if you want to purchase the Cupid, you can head over to Cupidbaby.com. Also, if you want to hear more about the founder’s story, you can visit the ‘About’ section on the website and of course, it’ll be linked down below in the description box. And again, you guys, if you can be open to exploring other options, because the next options that we’re going to talk about are expensive and they’re time consuming, and you can have complications with them. There’s like so many other things that go on when you get into doing these different medical procedures.
All things I do want to just state that we are in the Chicagoland area in Illinois, and we do have health insurance. We have Blue Cross Blue Shield and we have a PPL plan. Um, and I did want to put that out there just because I know depending on what state you live in may dictate what the laws are there in terms of fertility coverage and what they do and do not have to cover. Um, so here we are very grateful that we have a plan that does cover fertility treatments, so just keep that in mind as we go throughout this video. But even with insurance, we still spent like five figures over ten thousand dollars on just this process so far and we still don’t have a baby yet, so just keep that in mind. Okay, so to start off, um basically when we got back from Thailand, we went to go see a fertility specialist back in March. Um, so basically, my husband and I, we have a sexless marriage, so we both knew that in order to start our family, we would have to do some type of fertility treatment. My husband was the one who was like, ‘You know, let’s just do IVF’ and he had kind of brought that up even before we got married. Um, he was like, ‘You know, let’s just do IVF.’ And so, me of course, I was very hesitant about it because you know, his part is way easier. So, we went to the fertility specialist and the first thing they do is list their preliminary testing and I’m gonna grab my laptop here so I can look at my spreadsheet.
I would recommend keeping a spreadsheet of your medical costs, especially if you are doing fertility treatments, and or if you even once you become pregnant because cost, and sometimes it’s just easy to keep it organized.
I come from a finance background, so I’m a spreadsheet girl, but you know, anyway, so they did some initial testing. They tested my husband’s sperm and they did some blood work on him, and so both of those were like 20 co-pays. So it’s really inexpensive, so if you and if you’re in a relationship where you’re struggling with fertility, I would say you both should get tested sooner rather than later. So, they did do a sperm analysis, they found that my husband has both a low sperm count and low sperm motility. So, and then they also those are only 20 co-pay, so that was like forty dollars for him.
And then for me, they did uh blood work to check my amh levels, that’s kind of like an indicator of uh if your egg levels are at where they should be for your age and then they did an ultrasound, they actually did two different uh transvaginal ultrasounds and then he wanted to do a another test, so the blood work and the two ultrasounds, those were twenty dollars a piece, so sixty dollars right there. And then he wanted to do an additional test where they pushed die or contrast or die throughout my fallopian tubes to check to see if there was any blockages and that was 531.41 that was our co-insurance for that visit for that procedure.
Okay, so from there, once they had figured out that okay, my husband has you know, low sperm count, low sperm motility, I was given the option to either go straight to IVF or we could try IUI’s and so I wanted to try IUI’s because IVF is a lot more a lot more invasive. Like IUI’s are uncomfortable with IVF, I was just like, I don’t really want to have to do that if we don’t have to do that. So the plan was we’re gonna do three and if it doesn’t work after three, then we’re just gonna go to IVF.
So the first cycle, he put me on Clomid, which is like a 10 co-pay and then he had me do a Lupron trigger shot and so that comes from a specialty pharmacy where they ship you the medication so that was a hundred and fifty dollar co-pay for that specialty injection medication. And then for the actual IUI itself, our co-insurance was only a hundred and seventy-nine dollars and five cents, so that’s what it costs for the doctor to actually perform the actual IUI, and that did include two days of insemination because he inseminates the day before ovulation in the day of ovulation.
So the IUI’s I would say are not very, they’re not super expensive, but it’s an expense, but not too horrible. For the first one, we’re only looking at like 339 dollars and five cents for that first IUI. So the Iowa IUI didn’t work. I mean, spoiler alert, none of them work, but that didn’t work. And so after that, I never took the Clomid again.
He put me on uh Follistim, which helps to you know stimulate your follicles. He put me on Gonal-F, which is a medication, it’s an officer injections, and this injection will stop you from ovulating so that you ovulate when they want you to ovulate. We did Lupron trigger shot and also HCG, and I also did another medication that was from Walgreens, like a pill. So we had four specialty medications and then one oral medication. So for the specialty medications, that was 600 and then another ten dollar co-pay for the medication that I got from the pharmacy. I’ll try to put it on the screen because I don’t remember the name of it and I only took it for this one IUI and it didn’t, I guess, it didn’t do what he needed it to do because didn’t use it again. And then it was 186.66 for him to perform the two IUI’s, like I said, the day before and the day of ovulation.
All right, so the third IUI, that was supposed to be the final IUI but ended up not being the final IUI because we did a fourth IUI. That one was only 300 in specialty medication so I already had medication left over from cycle two, so we used some of that medication and we just ordered more I believe HCG and more Lupron. And then I only ended up paying 131.59 out of pocket. Our co-insurance for the actual procedure that time was only 131 dollars, not because his prices got cheaper but because we had hit our out-of-pocket max at that point.
So even though I’d only spent like two thousand one hundred dollars out of pocket on fertility procedures, I do have an autoimmune condition and I do go to the doctor and the rheumatologist for other things. So just a combination of everything. In June, I had hit my out of pocket max for the entire year, so after this, everything that was coverable by the insurance company, I did not have to pay anything out of pocket. I had zero co-insurance, but that does not include things that are not covered of course. So we still ended up paying 9,500 out of pocket, which I will get to that in a moment. But I do just want to touch on why did we have a fourth IUI? So essentially what happened is, we were getting ready to do an IVF egg retrieval back in July after refilled IUI’s and so my doctor was going out of town for two weeks at the end of like June and so since he was going out of town, he was like okay we’re gonna do genetic testing on both you and your husband.
I would recommend keeping a spreadsheet of your medical costs, especially if you are doing fertility treatments and or if you even once you become pregnant because cost and sometimes it’s just easy to keep it organized. I come from a finance background so I’m a freshly girl but you know anyway.
They did some initial testing so they tested my husband’s sperm and they did some blood work on him and so both of those were like 20 co-pays. So it’s really inexpensive so if you and if you’re in a relationship where you’re struggling with fertility I would say you both should get tested sooner rather than later. So they did do a sperm analysis, they found that my husband has both low sperm count and low sperm motility.
So, and then they also, those are only 20 co-pays, so that was like forty dollars for him. And then for me, they did uh blood work to check my amh levels, that’s kind of like an indicator of uh if your egg levels are at where they should be for your age and then they did an ultrasound, they actually did two different uh transvaginal ultrasounds and then he wanted to do a another test, so the blood work and the two ultrasounds, those were twenty dollars a piece, so sixty dollars right there and then he wanted to do an additional test where they pushed die or contrast or die throughout my Fallopian tubes to check to see if there was any blockages. And that was 531.41 that was our co-insurance for that visit for that procedure.
Okay, so from there, once they had figured out that okay my husband has you know low sperm count, low sperm motility I was given the option to either go straight to IVF or we could try iuis and so I wanted to try iuis because IVF is a lot more a lot more invasive. Like IUS are uncomfortable with IVF I was just like I don’t really want to have to do that if we don’t have to do that. So the plan was we’re gonna do three and if it doesn’t work after three then we’re just gonna go to IVF.
So, the first cycle, he put me on Clomid which is like a 10 co-pay and then he had me do a Lupron trigger shot and so that comes from a specialty pharmacy where they ship you the medication so that was a hundred and fifty dollar co-pay for that specialty injection medication and then for the actual IUI itself our co-insurance was only a hundred and seventy nine dollars and five cents so that’s what it costs for the doctor to actually perform the actual IUI and that did include uh two days of insemination because he inseminates the day before ovulation in the day of ovulation.
The iuis I would say are not very, they’re not super expensive but it’s an expense but not too horrible for the first one we’re only looking at like 339 dollars and five cents for that first IUI. So the Iowa IUI doesn’t work I mean spoiler alert none of them work but that didn’t work and so after that I never took the club mat again.
I would recommend keeping a spreadsheet of your medical costs, especially if you are doing fertility treatments, or even once you become pregnant, because costs can add up and it’s just easy to keep it organized. I come from a finance background, so I’m a bit of a numbers girl. But anyway, they did some initial testing. They tested my husband’s sperm and did some blood work on him, and both of those were 20 copays, so it’s really inexpensive. If you’re in a relationship where you’re struggling with fertility, I would say you both should get tested sooner rather than later. They did a sperm analysis and found that my husband has both a low sperm count and low sperm motility. And then they also did blood work to check my AMH levels, which is an indicator of if your egg levels are where they should be for your age, and then they did an ultrasound. They actually did two different transvaginal ultrasounds. And then he wanted to do another test where they pushed dye or contrast dye throughout my Fallopian tubes to check for blockages. And that was 531.41, which was our co-insurance for that visit and that procedure.
From there, once they had figured out that my husband had a low sperm count and low sperm motility, I was given the option to either go straight to IVF or try IUI’s. I wanted to try IUI’s because IVF is a lot more invasive, and IUI’s are uncomfortable enough. So, the plan was we were going to do three IUI’s, and if it didn’t work after three, then we were going to go to IVF.
The first cycle, he put me on Clomid, which was a 10 copay. And then he had me do a Lupron trigger shot. That comes from a specialty pharmacy where they ship you the medication, and that was a 150 dollar copay for that specialty injection medication. And then for the actual IUI itself, our co-insurance was only 179 dollars and 5 cents, so that’s what it cost for the doctor to actually perform the IUI, and that did include two days of insemination, because he inseminates the day before ovulation and the day of ovulation.
So, the IUI’s I would say are not very expensive, but it’s an expense. But not too horrible. For the first one, we were only looking at 339 dollars and 5 cents for that first IUI. And if the IUI doesn’t work, I mean, spoiler alert, none of them worked, but that didn’t work. And so after that, I never took Clomid again. And he put me on follow stem, which helps to stimulate your follicles, and he put me on gynorelics, which is a medication. It’s an officer injection, and this injection will stop you from ovulating, so that you ovulate when they want you to ovulate. We did Lupron trigger shot and also HCG, and I also did another medication that was from Walgreens, like a pill. So we had four specialty medications and then one oral medication. So for the specialty medications, that was 600, and then another 10 dollar copay for the medication that I got from the pharmacy. I’ll try to put it on the screen because I don’t remember the name of it, and I only took it for this one IUI, and it didn’t do what he needed it to do, so he didn’t use it again. And then it was 186.66 for him to perform the two IUI’s, like I said, the day before and the day of ovulation. All right
All right, so the third IUI that was supposed to be the final IUI but ended up not being the final IUI because we did a fourth IUI. That one was only 300 in specialty medication, so I already had medication left over from cycle two, so we used some of that medication and we just ordered more. I believe HCG and more Lupron, and then I only ended up paying 131.59 out of pocket. Our co-insurance for the actual procedure that time was only 131 dollars, not because his prices got cheaper, but because we had hit our out-of-pocket Max at that point. So even though I’d only spent like twenty one hundred dollars out of pocket on fertility procedures, I do have an autoimmune condition and I do go to the doctor and the rheumatologist for other things. So just a combination of everything, in June I had hit my out of pocket max for the entire year so after this, everything that was coverable by the insurance company I did not have to pay anything out of pocket, I had zero coinsurance. But that does not include things that are not covered of course, so we still ended up paying 9,500 out of pocket, which I will get to that in a moment. But I do just want to touch on why did we have a fourth IUI? So essentially what happened is we were getting ready to do an IVF ache retrieval back in July after refilled iuis, and so my doctor was going out of town for two weeks at the end of like June and so since he was going out of town he was like okay we’re gonna do genetic testing on both you and your husband.
And then that should take two to three weeks. For that testing, we’re gonna put you on birth control for like a week and a half. You’ll come off of that, you start your period, you’ll start the simulation and we’ll get the genetic testing back way ahead of time.
And he’s like this way, we won’t waste any time, you know, we’ll be able to just kind of keep the Bob rolling. Okay, great. What ends up happening is something happens to the blood samples. They got coagulated or something. Basically, by the time from time they got from we gave them at the doctor’s office when they got to the lab, they were unusable. So we don’t know this in like a week and a half later because my doctor is off enjoying his life in Europe. So by the time that he comes back and we find out that the tests, the blood work that we did was unusable, we do the blood samples again, and at this point he’s like, well we won’t get it back in time. And he was like, while I don’t think it’s like really unlikely that you and your husband are going to have any similar genetic markings because we’re two different ethnicities. He was like, it’s just something that you know, we want to make sure before you know we do anything with the eggs. And I was like, okay, no problem. So he was like, well listen, instead of us just wasting this cycle, how about we just turn this into an IUI and we’ll basically do like a little mini test run on the medication for the IVF because at this point we’re doing the same exact medication. It’s just the dosages of the follow stem are being tweaked a little bit, so that’s really the only like difference at this point in medications.
So we do that, and this time he’s like we’re really gonna hit it hard, we’re going to do three inseminations instead of two. So he did three inseminations and literally like there’s usually like a two-week wait before you find out if you’re pregnant or not, or you’ll just start your period. And I literally have something in my eye. I kid you not a week and a half later, I started my period, so I was just like Lord, I’m done, nothing is working right, like send help please. So the first three IUIs were uncomfortable, but maybe that fourth one was hell. Like it was uncomfortable during the IUI, it was uncomfortable after the IUI and I’ll get into ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome in a second, which I got for sure after the egg retrieval, but I do think that I had a little touch of that or something after the fourth IUI because remember we were doing a medication level that you would use for IVF instead of IUI and so I was in so much pain, but I’m like okay, I’m just gonna like tough it out.
So basically, IUI number four fails and then we get the blood work back. And mind you, my doctor always cost me and lets me know what’s going on over the phone but this particular time, he calls me and he was like, “Hey Sheila, can you come into the office?” And I was like, “Well yeah, I can come into the office, but I was like you know what’s the test results come back for the genetic testing?” And he’s like, “Yes, they came back, but I need to talk to you about it in person.” And I was like, “Okay,” and he was like, “Can your husband come with you?” Now typically, my husband never came to the appointments outside of like the first appointment, and I think one day he was in the area because he travels around a lot for work and I think he stopped in for one of the IUI’s. But other than that, I always go by myself, because you have a lot of appointments. Like there are weeks where I will go see him four or five times that week, whether it’s for blood work or ultrasound, so it’s a lot.
So anyway, he was like, “Your husband come in,” and I was like, “No, he’s gonna be working, but I can come in.” So I go in and he explains to me he was like, “I’ve been doing IVF for like 41 years and I’ve never seen this before, but you and your husband are both carriers of a super rare genetic condition. So neither one of us have it, but we are genetic carriers of this disease.” And he was like, “Basically, he was like, first off, he was like, you and your husband need to not have sex,” and I was like, “Trust me, I don’t worry about that,” but he was like, “You need to not have sex, it’s very important because you don’t want to have children born with this condition and it’s a 25% chance that if you get pregnant naturally, that this could happen.” And I’m like, “Okay,” so he was like, “I would suggest talking to a genetic counselor,” but he was like, “Also, before, because it’s a rare condition, not all Labs test for it, and no in-network labs for Blue Cross for our plan test for it.” So he had to find a lab that would even test for this condition, uh, and then find out what it was going to be from there.
So basically, uh finally finds a lab after like a week or so. He finds a lab that can do it, and so the lab has to create a probe to test for this condition. So they take more uh DNA samples from us and that was three hundred dollars for them to do the DNA samples. So they wanted samples from us, they wanted samples from our parents as well, but my mother’s deceased then his father’s out of the country, so we ended up just not doing that. But the deal was that if we don’t have our parents’ uh DNA, that we would need to have at least eight embryos for them to test.
I think seven or eight embryos for the test, so now I’m like, “Okay,” because here’s the god show with Blue Cross. So Blue Cross will pay for egg retrieval at least for my plan, I can’t speak for all plans, but they will pay for a egg retrieval, however, they will not pay for another egg retrieval until you’ve used the eggs that you already have. So, in my mind I’m thinking like, “Oh my God, if I have like five, if we end up with like five embryos, it’s not gonna be enough for them to test to see if the embryos have this genetic condition.” And then like we’re gonna have to pay out of pocket for another egg retrieval in order to have enough eggs for them to be tested. So, at this point, I’m like, “Okay,” so we get with the lab, we pay the lab to do the 300 to do the the DNA testing on us then we pay another sixty-five hundred dollars for them to create this special probe, it’s not from testing yet, this is just for the testing company to create a probe to be able to test the embryos with once they get them.
So we do that, then I have the IVF egg retrieval and so, uh, I had 17 eggs that were retrieved and uh, they sent nine embryos for testing. We paid another 2,900 for those nine embryos to be tested, and we have three embryos uh left and uh of those three embryos, three embryos are genetic carriers but none of them actually carry there, none of them will actually have the condition but they’ll be carriers like my husband and I are, and hopefully, if you’re not lucky enough to meet another rare person that has this genetic marker, they won’t really have to worry because it really is only a big concern if both you and your partner have the genetic marker. Basically, we did the egg retrieval with the eggs that we have, those are sitting in storage, storage is another 400 a year to store the embryos. We weren’t able to do an embryo transfer this month because unfortunately, my, they put me back on birth control and whenever I go on birth control, my just my body don’t like to act right, as you guys saw with IUI number four where I had my period like a week later, my body has never worked well with birth control. And so, this is no exception, so my period is just missing in action and so uh, they did some blood work and they found out that my levels are not where they thought that they should be and that I’m about to ovulate and that wasn’t where they were expecting things to be, there expecting me to start a period which apparently I am not about to start a period uh. So, at this point, we’re just gonna let my period happen naturally and probably sometime in January.
Hopefully, God willing, we’ll do an embryo transfer and so we’ll be in a new plan year so we’ll have a new out-of-pocket max to meet, which I know for sure we’ll meet it next year. We do have the opportunity to submit it to the insurance company to see if they will cover part of it. They are an out-of-network lab, so we’ll have to meet our out-of-pocket max for out of network. It’s a separate out-of-pocket max, and that’s like a thousand dollars. And then after that, they may pay a portion of it. So, we’re estimated that we might get back three thousand dollars, maybe, if we do great. If we don’t, it is what it is. It has to be done.
But basically, the reason that we may be able to get it back is because we are both carriers of a rare genetic condition. It’s uh, I guess we’re able to apply for that exception due to that. So, yeah, that’s pretty much what we have spent. So we have spent well over ten thousand dollars this year just in health care costs, like over twelve thousand dollars just in fertility treatment costs, and it’s expensive and it’s uncomfortable.
And I will say for me, everyone’s different, but the fertility medications definitely have caused my autoimmune condition to flare up. It is uncomfortable, it takes a lot of it’s very time-consuming, going back and forth to the fertility clinic to get your and get a lot of blood work, a lot of ultrasounds. It’s just a lot of back and forth. So, you may have to take time off work. I know like literally before I quit my job, I was getting to the point where I was like, like how many more like excuses am I gonna come up with to get off work to go to all these different appointments and it wasn’t something that I really wanted to share with anyone while I all of a sudden had to go to all these doctor’s appointments, so I would just say again, like I said earlier, if you can try at-home insemination, it definitely is something to look at because if you can get it accomplished at home, it’s just going to be a lot better. And I ended up getting ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome after my egg retrieval. I literally thought I was going to die, I was with two seconds from going to the ER.
Luckily, my doctor was open and he had you know, he opened up for me to come in for him to take a look at everything. And I basically, my ovaries just got over stimulated and they were super super painful. It was just not a comfortable experience. So, on top of my autoimmune condition flaring, then I had the ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome thing going on, which is super uncomfortable. And it’s just, if you were able to do it at home and not go through those things, I would just highly recommend it. Even if you’re doing other follicle stimulating treatments through your doctor, you may still be able to use at-home insemination products to a company, some of the medications that you might be taking. So, I would just highly recommend checking it out. Click the link down below in the description box for cupidbaby.com to check out their kit, it’s super affordable and I love the fact that it is founded and created by a woman. So definitely check that out. Thank you guys for watching as always and I will see you guys soon for another video. Bye, thank you.