Bitterness

I had other plans for what I wanted to blog about this month.  I wanted to go into the details about TCM and my new diet.  I have an appointment with an acupuncturist next week and thought this would all lead to a really upbeat month full of hope, a sense of being proactive, and a feeling of general optimism as I head toward the last quarter of 2013 and prepare for IVF as soon as we can pull everything together in 2014.

But instead I need to get something off my chest that's been nagging away at me.  For several months now, probably beginning back in June when B & I were travelling with friends (who have children, but this was an adults only trip), I've been getting more and more resentful, angry, and bitter about having to "buy" our potential children.

I've been getting so annoyed by the fact that we have to sacrifice and change our lifestyle so drastically, just to pay for the possibility of getting pregnant.  And don't tell me its just a drop in the bucket of what you'll be paying once you have kids.  That's not true because while you just have the normal expenses that come along with kids, I'll still be paying for my IF treatments for years after my first child is born, if I'm even so lucky as to get a live birth out of the whole endeavor.  Seriously, my first child would be in grade school before I've finished paying off their conception.

Which begs the question, how exactly, per se, am I supposed to be able to pay for daycare, and $500-$1000 a month in IF debt, and even begin to think about doing it all over again to try for a second child?  Seems impossible.  It's sounding more and more likely that B & I would be facing a future raising an only child if we don't knock it out of the park with twins on the first go-round.

I'm just so angry that I even have to think about these things!  The only thing holding B & I back from the family we are trying to achieve is money!  And it's holding us back so definitively that I'm leaning more and more toward exploring a child-free life choice.  I just don't know after all these years of bitter pain and sacrifice, if I could even enjoy a pregnancy that I had to pay so much for the way I once could have.  I don't know if B & I would be happy with the life we'd be bringing a baby into under those circumstances now.  I don't know if we'd be happy now, with the way it seems that things would play out.

A baby won't fix all of our problems, just our biggest problem, which is infertility, of course.  But this one big one extends its roots and creeps into all other aspects of our life.  It affects our finances, our home, our relationship, our sex-life our lifestyle, and all conversations about our future.  Maybe choosing to live child-free would eliminate the biggest problem, so that we could work on repairing all the smaller ones and live a simple, happy life together, like the one we had before we started TTC.

I don't know.

Would I regret this choice later?

Once we've solved some of our other smaller problems (mostly financial I'd say), would we then be left feeling that something was still missing?  Would our arms and hearts ache from the emptiness that a child was supposed to fill?

Maybe I don't have to write the whole thing off in order to feel better about things right now.  Maybe just putting IVF off for another year or two while we get other things more squared away would be a better compromise.  Maybe we should pull back and revisit all this in a year or two, while I'm still young enough to have good odds of success.  Before that dreaded 35th birthday...

Then again, maybe I'm just stressed right now, and have been living off the "vacation-high" all summer where the world's grass seems greener on the other side.  Maybe next month, or next week, or next year I'll feel differently and be ready for IVF as soon as possible again.  A cousin once told me that IF is a roller-coaster of emotions.  Geesh, she wasn't kidding!

Crowdfunding a baby?

The message below was included in a daily digest of news alerts I get about infertility.  This one was particularly interesting to me as it was something I've actually secretly fantasized about but never thought could be a reality: crowdsourcing your family.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Google Alerts <googlealerts-noreply@google.com>Date: Thu, May 2, 2013 at 1:42 PM
Subject: Google Alert - infertility
To: gile.jm@gmail.com

News 1 new results for infertility

KrowdKidz Launches Crowdfunding Community for Infertility, Surrogacy and ... IT News Online TEMPE, Ariz., May 2, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Today KrowdKidz announced it has launched its crowdfunding portal designed to help families challenged with infertility to find donors willing to help defray the costs of infertility treatments ... See all stories on this topic »

---

This once a day Google Alert is brought to you by Google.

On May 2nd, KrowdKidz announced it launched a crowdfunding portal designed to help families challenged with infertility to find donors willing to help defray the costs of infertility treatments, surrogacy and adoption. The portal launched with three initial families seeking help. Donors have the ability to contribute as little as $10 to a family.

IndieGoGo, and Kickstarter, are other crowdfunding sites that have has seen some wild campaigns this since 2011, including a family asking for help funding IVF to start their family.  It was successful and the woman got pregnant.

A quick search in the IndieGoGo site of "IVF" produced six infertility campaigns.  One of the more successful ones featured a video I'd like to share here:

Pretty powerful stuff.

I've talked to B about the idea of doing something like this.  He isn't super comfortable with the idea, he says it would feel like begging.  He said his family could never know about it if we did it.  He admits it is pride that stops him from being on board.  That is frustrating to me, since it is only money that prevents us from being parents and having the family we are ready to have.  

So I guess I could fairly argue that pride and money are the causes of the hell I am living in.  Or at least they are keeping me from my happiness.

What do you think, would you ever crowd-source IVF?  Would it be too embarrassing?  Would you be ashamed?  Would you ever donate to it for another couple?  What if it helped you attain your dreams?  What if you helped a family to grow?

Podcast: Taming the Twin Trend from Infertility

This podcast is a couple years old (March 30, 2011), but I came across it on the RESOLVE website and decided to check it out.

I agree that people are seeing twins more and more, not even just in the popular media with celebrities, but with everyday people all around them.  Of course people struggling with infertility would feel comfortable hedging their bets with the risk of twins, rather than just transferring one embryo, which would be safer for the fetus(es) and eventual babies/children. It's funny that I say "hedgin their bets," because this whole world of infertility and ART treatments really is a gamble, and many couples get burned in the game, losing money, time, sanity, and the only sure-thing in all this is stress and heartache.  For the lucky ones, the risk is worth it and they graduate out of infertility into parenthood, one way or another.

The part that scares me is that whenever people try to warn me about how difficult multiples will be, I always just think about the cost of having two the same age at the same time, and the stress and time management of it all.  I always brush it off and declare that if anyone can handle multiples, its me!  I am the oldest of 4 kids and grew up living in an in-home daycare.  "I got this," I think to myself when imagining myself surrounded by my adorable like-dressed twins or even triplets.  I've never considered the health risks, medical costs, and heartbreak that could be associated with it.  This podcast kind of opened my eyes and makes me think twice about it.  And I think that's a good thing.  As we get closer to IVF ourselves, I think going in knowing how we feel about every possible outcome is the most important thing.

At this point, if B & I do IVF in 2014, would I choose to do a single or a double/triple embryo transfer?  Unless my health insurance covered it, or if they offered the "two-fer" deal as mentioned in the podcast, I'd probably still elect to transfer as many as my RE will allow, just to increase my odds of a successful live birth.  I'd rather have multiple children who need extra care & attention for a while, then no children ever.  It is so maddening that money and state-mandates on health insurance coverage can play such an important, and honestly, such a deciding factor in all this.  I truly envy those who are able to naturally and easily conceive.  They may think they do, but most of them have no idea what a gift life truly is, and I mean that in the most fundamental meaning of the word.

The Family Act

History

(Taken from the Resolve Website)

In May 2011 a bill to create a tax credit for the out-of-pocket costs associated with infertility medical treatment was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressman John Lewis (GA). Aptly named the Family Act of 2011, S 965/HR 3522 could have potentially helped thousands of people seeking medical treatment that otherwise would be out of reach for them. RESOLVE supported this bill and required help from its followers and members to get this bill passed and made into a law. The bill died in the 112th Congress and must be re-introduced in the 113th Congress.  Check back on the Resolve Website for updates on the Family Act in the 113th Congress.

Current Status

The 2013 Advocacy Day in Washington D.C. on May 8th will highlight the reintroduction of this bill as one of two major issues this year.  For more information about attending this year's Advocacy Day, please see previous blog posts from this week on inconceivablestory.blogspot.com, or visit the Resolve Website's Advocacy Day webpage.

More Information Regarding The Family Act

(From the Resolve Website)

About the Family Act - S 965/HR 3522

Learn the details about this past pending legislation.

Current Bill status

Find out what's going on with this bill.

Why Does RESOLVE Support this Bill?
The Family Act of 2011 allows thousands that would otherwise not be able to access care to receive the medical treatment they need to build their family.

Infertility Tax Credit FAQs
Get answers to frequently asked questions about this pending legislation.

Family Act in the News
Read the latest articles about the Family Act.

Become a Grassroots Advocate
Every year we are fighting anti-family bills in more and more states. We need you today. We need you to help build our state advocacy infrastructure so that we are prepared to fight back in all 50 states at any time.

My thoughts

I am personally very excited about the Family Act, and if it gets re-introduced as a bill in the 113th Congress, I'll be happy to support it, advocate for it, promote it, and even lobby for it in anyway I can.  I know many of my readers and hundreds, probably even thousands more out there do not have health insurance coverage for IVF and other ART treatments.  So many of us could benefit from this opportunity to make our dreams of creating or growing our families become a reality.  I urge everyone affected by infertility to support the Family Act, especially if it is re-introduced as a bill this year.  Together we are stronger, so please, let's join together to support this Act!

I feel like I should explain something

We haven't announced anything officially yet (like on FB), but B and are in the process of buying our first house together.  Actually, it's this house, the one in the photo above!


We put in on offer at the end of March, and it was accepted the next day despite two other competing offers!  The night before B's surgery in early April we had our inspection, which went extremely well.  We did radon testing in the basement and the levels came back .1 higher than the safe level, so we spent a week or two negotiating back and forth and in the end, they agreed to split the cost of installing a certified mitigation system, which we will roll into our closing costs.


We meet with our mortgage lender later this week to finalize the paperwork and settle on a closing date, but we already put in notice with our landlord that we'd be starting to move out by July 1st at the latest.  We're keeping the apartment through July so we can take our time moving in, but for all intensive purposes, we hope/plan to be moving in to our new home around the end of June!


So...the reason why I feel like I have something to explain has to do with money.  I've spent four months blogging about the cost of infertility and talking about how hard it was to walk away from our planned IVF cycle because of the ballooning costs of it all... and here we are buying a house only a few months later... out of nowhere.


You see, B and I had planned to figure out the baby stuff first, then get safer cars, hopefully take another trip to Europe for his 40th birthday next year, and when all that was figured out, then start saving for a house - someday.  The house thing was on the ten year plan, not the two month plan.


So what happened?


The IVF saga happened.


If you'll remember, we pressured ourselves into trying to afford IVF before we had planned for it and way before we were financially ready.  Because of a misprint on a health insurance partner's website, they were willing to honor a severely discounted rate for me... but I only had a couple months to get it done.  Well, we hadn't thought we'd resort to IVF until we'd exhausted all other options, in two to three years maybe, but certainly not anytime soon.  


But when a chance in a lifetime like this comes around to get such a cheap rate on such an expensive procedure with such a better chance of helping us realize our dream of having a baby, well, we couldn't pass it up.  We had to try to take advantage of the situation.  So we spent the months of October, November, December and the beginning of January scrambling to beg, borrow, and steal the money we'd need to bring to the table for this discounted IVF procedure.


By January we had a weekend-long discussion about whether we could really do it.  No, actually it was whether we really wanted to.  We'd had to take out a persona loan of $7500 to cover the amount we'd be using from our FSA Health Spending Account because they only pay for medical procedures after the fact, not before.  We were planning to max out both of our credit cards to cover the cost of the medications we'd need.  We wiped out our savings on previous test & procedures and were living paycheck to paycheck.  It was a bad idea and it was all too much.  And none of it was a sure thing.  There was a very high chance that the meds would be even more expensive if my body didn't respond the way it should, or there could be other complications... and of course there was a 50/50 chance it wouldn't work anyway and then we'd have all that debt and nothing to show for it.


So we made the decision not to go through with it.  And then something kind of miraculous happened.  The Monday after we decided not to do the IVF, B's HR lady at work told him that the company hadn't processed the FSA Health Spending Account information yet for the year, and asked if he was sure he really wanted to have that much taken out of his paychecks...


He lowered it down to the cost of one IUI (about $1300) and had her cancel the rest.  Now we were really digging ourselves back out of the hole that the IVF drama had created!


We talked about paying off that personal loan of $7500 with itself too be rid that too.  Only we decided to wait and do our taxes first because last year we'd had to pay in $2000 and we might need it to pay our tax bill again this year (we'd pay off the rest with what was left and just pay off the remaining $2000 in about 4-6 months).


Turned out we owed money again.  $1300 this time.  Huh, just realized that's the cost of an IUI cycle.  Ironic.


Anyway, we were so mad at our lot in life.  We are two working individuals without a house or kids so of course our tax bill will be high.  Thing is, WE'VE BEEN TRYING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT LACK OF KIDS THING!  Ugh.


So the thought occurred to us, if we have no control right now over the kids thing... why not buy a house?  Thats something we can do to help lower our tax bill next year.  And it's still a buyer's market, with historically low interest rates.  Seemed like now was the perfect time to make this investment...


Plus, in the back of my mind, there were actually some fertility related issues to consider as well.  If we do have to do IVF down the road (if B's surgery wasn't enough for us...), at least the whole "saving up for a downpayment on a house" thing wouldn't be getting in the way of saving for IVF.  And if for ANY reason we wound up adopting, I'd think having a home for the child could only help us.  And finally, and this one is probably the least important but stuck with/stung me the most: a certain family member who shall remain nameless made the comment in a long list of reasons why should not do IVF (during that bitter weekend when we were ultimately deciding on our own not to go through with it anyway), that we should concentrate now on "creating a life for a child" and that the child would just come after we took care of that.  


Completely ignorant and insensitive.


This person wanted us to work on taking care of ourselves first, buy a newer & safer car for B, and buy a house. Then, and only then, think about a child.  This person didn't understand that time is ticking against us on that last milestone and that it won't magically (or through karma or whatever) happen just because we've got all our other ducks in a row.  But anyway, in the back of my mind I kept thinking throughout all this house-hunting stuff that at least this person can't make any more comments about "creating a life for a child" if we have to/choose to do IVF later.  And really, we probably won't be discussing our plans with this person anyway.


So, we chose to use that money from the personal loan to put down a downpayment on a FHA loan!  We'll be able to pay it off very quickly, and once that's gone our mortgage will be much less then our current rent, so we'll be saving money every month on top of the tax break we hope to get next year!  All money that can be saved up for other important things to consider in our future ;)


In the end, it really feels like everything happened the way it did because it was supposed too.  None of this house business would have ever been possible without all that IVF crap.  It's a very bright silver lining.  And now, not only has it all distracted me from my sadness and depression from our infertility, it is also lending me nothing but hope & opportunities to think about for a long time to come.  This kind of positivity is EXACTLY what I needed right now.  This all couldn't have happened at a better time.


We've been working through a non-profit agency that does mortgage counseling which I receive free access to as a benefit through my work.  This company has been amazing and helped us to find special loan programs out there in our city, which we couldn't have found on our own.  They also helped us find our AMAZING realtor too.  The whole process could not have been more positive.


And so between the meetings with this non-profit, our realtor, house hunting, putting in offers and counter offers, dealing with inspectors and negotiations, we've had a very busy Spring this year!  Now we are just waiting for things to be finalized and can't wait to move in around the beginning of July... 


July.


That's when we find out if B's surgery improved things for us and we can start trying for a baby again.  I think between the busyness of planning the packing, the move, the cleaning & unpacking, the decorating, and the house-warming parties... we won't really have much time for dwelling on the TTC process again for a quite some time.  But we'll be able to enjoy our summer knowing that we have nothing to think about but hope and possibility for a while:)


July.


I can't wait for July!

The Cade Foundation: Help with Infertility Costs

I was so excited to find this in my news feed this morning!  I'm grateful, inspired by, and even kind of dumbstruck by the generosity of others who give to causes like these.  


B and I are hoping that his recent surgery will prevent us from needing expensive ART in the future, but its comforting to know that foundations like this are out there for couples like us out there if we need it.

Infertility Solutions: Grand & Giving Foundations