Funding your fertility

Oh, you guys are all so awesome (and this is why we blog!). Your suggestions are all spot on, let me address them (I'm putting this into a post, because there are all sorts of wonderful suggestions for financing a cycle here, and hopefully it will be helpful to someone):

1. I have contacted Bonei Olam (http://boneiolam.org, 718.252.1212). Actually, in Canada, they have a branch called Small Wonders (http://www.smallwonders.ca, 416.742.0090). They were extremely helpful for our first cycle, and have told us we qualify for funding for our second cycle as well. However, we don't have the funds to cover the balance of another cycle.

2. I was on atime (http://www.atime.org, in Canada: http://www.atime.ca) a lot in the beginning. They are very helpful, but don't have any other suggestions for us (although we will be calling them again to see if any new financial resources have appeared).

3. We have a large family, we have contacted family members but no one is forthcoming. In fact, one relative was somewhat offended that we asked for help. Our parents initially were extremely excited and supportive, but then when it came to helping financially, they suddenly were not so excited. One of our relatives has equally as suddenly forgotten that when we first talked about IVF, they offered to get a second mortgage on their home to help us.

4. Our shul community was fantastic, and members of our community actually pitched in and raised some money for us. We were hugely touched by that, and it was a lot of work, so we feel uncomfortable asking them to do that again (there were also shul members who felt it was inappropriate of us to ask our community for help, so that adds to the discomfort).

5. We took out a loan from Hebrew Free Loan for our first cycle. Our branch was actually quite excited, because no one had asked them for a loan for fertility before. Our branch's maximum loan amount is fairly low, and since we already have one loan, we can't take out another. We are trying to convince them to raise the loan amount for any future fertility requests from other couples suffering (apparently, some HFLs in the US give extremely high amounts for fertility-specific loans; I've heard up to $15,000. They are a great resource!).

6. Unfortunately, there are no baby-or-your-money-back programs here. In fact, I only know of one in Canada, and it's a partial refund.

7. Nobody mentioned this, so fyi: there are some clinics who have arrangements with local bank branches to give low-interest loans to people pursuing fertility treatment at that clinic. Ask if your clinic has an arrangement like this, and if not, ask them to set something up with their bank, or a local bank branch.

8. Please, please, feel free to problem solve! To be honest, I'm tired of sympathy (okay, I'm not actually tired of it - sympathy is great, but I don't know how many more original responses I can come up with to, "oh, that's too bad."). I'm frustrated and disappointed and don't know where else to turn. Paying for two surgeries and a cycle has put us in a hole, used up all our resources, including all our savings, so I feel like we're spinning in a circle.

9. Thank you for the welcome and hugs (I love hugs), and Lut, thanks for the link - there's a group on a mission to get IVF covered by healthcare in Canada and this abstract might be very helpful for them.

10. Why is it, when someone asks how our fertility stuff is going, when I say we can't continue because we can't come up with the funds, they always (always!) respond with, "have you considered adoption?" Because adoption is, you know, free.

Thank you all so much for your support and suggestions. It means a lot to me that I've got people out there rooting for me and Hubby. If anyone has any other suggestions that are missing from this list, please let me know and I'll include them here.

posted by projgen @ 23:47