It’s not easy or cheap to realise your dream of parenthood through fertility treatment. But when you finally get the happy news, it makes the rollercoaster ride worth it.
A few months before my 33rd birthday, my partner and I decided to visit a fertility clinic. It’s not as if we had traditional fertility problems, let’s just say we were both going to try to fall pregnant. And with us living a healthy lifestyle, still in our 30s and with two wombs at our disposal, we thought it was going to happen in a flash. How difficult could it possibly be?
If only we knew! Within months, our positivity and excitement made way for a rollercoaster ride of hope and disappointment. Combine that with an overload of hormones in the house, and it becomes even more challenging and hard to keep a sense of humour, not to mention a healthy bank balance.
During the initial consultations we learned that apart from me having a low ovarian reserve, neither of us had any serious problems. With the reassurance that our fallopian tubes were open, we were ovulating every month and after several x-rays, scans and blood tests, it was time to go sperm shopping.
Now, to buy sperm at a South African operated sperm bank will cost you between R1 000 and R2 700 per vial. For most treatments, you need one vial per cycle but you could need more. To choose our anonymous donor, we had a few non-negotiables and a lot of harder decisions were to follow. We placed our order and were ready to start the first rounds of artificial insemination.
When both of us had no luck, we decided to import sperm from an international sperm bank. Imported sperm costs R4 000 to R7 000 per vial. There were shipping fees and import duties to take into account, and the fertility clinic’s storage fee for sperm was R3 100 for 12 months. It cost us just under R40 000 to import four vials of sperm, of which we got a R10 000 deposit back when the container was returned to its country of origin.
In 12 months, we have been through eight unsuccessful rounds of artificial insemination (four rounds each), costing between R4 000 and R6 000 per cycle depending on the medication involved – and this excludes the sperm. If you have a boyfriend or husband, say thank you that you can get the goods for free. By this point, we realised it was time for a different approach…IVF.
IVF treatment is much more invasive and expensive. You pay R40 000 upfront and this excludes medication ranging between R7 000 and R12 000. The total of one cycle can easily be between R50 000 and R60 000. During IVF, if you have viable embryos left on day five after the egg retrieval, you can have the embryos genetically tested for R2 500 each. Together we did five rounds of IVF treatment.
Bearing in mind that not a single medical aid provides any cover for any of the above, no-one will ever be able to argue the fact that we really wanted these babies!
To keep funding the potential activities that we were hoping to happen in our ovaries, we started comparing other expenses to dream of a baby in our lives. A total of 8 artificial inseminations, 5 IVF’s, 24 vials of local sperm, 4 vials of international sperm, hundreds of injections and pills, a therapy session, wine to stay sane, acupuncture appointments, McDonald’s breakfasts across the fertility clinic and vitamins amounted to no less than R350 000.
And then, finally, the good news. Fifteen months of treatments later, the day after Mother’s Day this year, we found out that I was four weeks pregnant. At seven weeks, when we went for our first scan, there were two 1.4cm embryos with strong heartbeats.
Today every early morning scan we went to, every tear and every funny story along the way is a reminder of our boy Luca and daughter Finn, the two little miracles we are getting for Christmas this year.
Life as we know it will never be the same again. And we’re ready for many more rollercoasters to come!
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