We spent 52 k to have baby, and we get it
here's the fun letter from Aetna where they deny our
fertility coverage mm-hmm the cost of fertility for us has been at least 40k
yeah I think that the fertility industry there's a bit of taking advantage of
the patients because it is something that people aren't gonna speak up about
and so the costs are just exorbitant 1117 9,500 and then again 791 every month
that goes by that we were not starting the family that we wanted it was
all-consuming I felt like I was walking around being like where's our baby I'm
Melanie I'm catch and we are $50,000 in debt from fertility and baby costs oh
my god I feel triumphant this rug was a big milestone we met in Philadelphia in
our early 20s and we dated for like two and a half years before we got married
because we're just in it yeah
we had went back and forth when we were younger about whether
we wanted to be parents and it always felt really unattainable especially with
like having student loan debt surgery debt we moved together to Rome Italy in
2016 we lived there for about two years while we were there we really figured
out like we want to have a family thank you once we wanted it it felt so
intense and consuming and urgent and just like all we could think about we
thought we will just need to do I you eyes which is less involved in I've you
guys were 400 per I you I plus the sperm which was like a thousand per a I
nothing is covered by insurance and of insurances will cover but ours didn't we
called to enroll in the infertility program to try and get coverage and they
denied us because I'm medically a man to them but because I can't provide a
semen sample because I'm trans we can't qualify for infertility it's a super
emotional journey you feel defeated it feels hopeless every IUI that didn't
work was like watching me have a $2,000 period one of the lowest points in the
process of trying to get pregnant
was when we were trying to decide if we were going to do IVF
because it felt like we are saddling ourselves with a debt that was
insurmountable and it just got to the point where I was like I just can't have
every month be such an emotional roller coaster I just want to do one more
whatever it cost like let's just do it we've compiled all of the costs that
we've incurred doing all of our fertility fun going down the list for example
sperm 851 again 1117 labs 130 labs 155 we don't even know what these are for
half the time every step of IVF also has a cost so like preparation of frozen
sperm is five hundred dollars frozen embryo transfer is four thousand dollars
yeah egg retrieval 9500 IVF cycle nine thousand five hundred and it just keeps
going and going and at the bottom we find ourselves in the total five fifty
thousand three hundred seventy two dollars and 33 cents so after almost two
years of trying we did our IVF cycle we transferred our embryo on Christmas Eve
and even though we're like atheists and punk we love Christmas because
Christmas is like glitter and magic so we did a pregnancy test and we got a
really faint positive line that was wild foolish it worked we're bringing oh my
god it was really exciting we took out four credit cards totaling $25,000 and
turned out that was the cheapest route cheaper them medical loans or anything
else so we've just been working on paying those down I do freelance social
media and content work so I've just been like really hustling and doing shoots
while 30 weeks pregnant
and I am a graphic designer and also an artist for work in
addition to working full time every night after work I'm doing custom artwork I
then make another $2,000 a month that I put directly on the cards so I started
this journal when I opened all the credit cards I was like I can't even
remember to log into some of them they're all different banks and right now we're
at thirteen thousand two dollars and seventy four cents so we've paid off
thirty seven thousand three hundred sixty nine dollars at fifty nine cents in
the past two years I feel like a big part of like being super transparent about
the debt that we were able to take on is like also being super aware of the
privilege we have to even access like a credit line like that you're able to
take this leave this so many folks can't take just a little bit of science and
a lot of financial adventure liens to check a bay this is their nursery so this
is our stroller this normally costs like seventeen hundred dollars
but we got it used off of Face book for two hundred it's in
this whole basket of clothes is all hand-me-downs a lot of our friends have
already had babies go for us we also ended up getting donations from friends
and family they came to about like six thousand dollars which was mind-blowing
so that helped okay my legs feel really like pissed if she was kicking so much
there was no way I could have expected that it would be twenty five thousand in
IVF alone just to get pregnant like always up here I'm like what are you doing
you just have no idea how much these things cost until you start the process
it's been challenging and stressful and painful but we're also very privileged
to even be in this position I think our friends understand the decision and
take on the fertility debt because everybody's been in kind of similar
situations of either taking on grad school debt or how sad I think debt is just
a universal millennial experience at this point [Music] hey heartbeat yes past
so good go chickpea go and so close I don't think we're setting up our kid for
failure by not being like super wealthy or anything like whatever like we have
so much love it's so crazy that we did all of this stuff and the real hasn't
even happened yet I think parenthood is gonna be really hard and exciting we're
really lucky and we're gonna love this kids so much and give them all the best
opportunities that we possibly can baby it's our baby oh my god oh my god oh
why are you so perfect oh my god I'm goanna hold you all day every day, are you
so cute
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