I Want to Have a Baby

As you travel further down the path of an infertility diagnosis, your choices decrease and the costs increase.

I want to have a baby. This should be easy-ish. I’m happily married to a wonderful husband I’ve known since high school. We have good jobs, and together we earn more than enough to responsibly have a child in an expensive city (Washington DC.). We are in our mid-thirties; like most of our friends we put off having children until about two years ago. For me, that was likely about five years too late. That’s because I’ve been diagnosed with decreased ovarian reserve, which means of the few eggs I have left, almost none are viable enough for a successful pregnancy.

As you travel further down the path of an infertility diagnosis, your choices decrease and the costs (emotional, physical, financial) increase. I started out thinking Clomid (a drug that is used to treat infertility) would be the answer — some pills, some scans, a few tests, and, I hoped, a baby. Then my doctor told my husband and me that Clomid would be useless and referred us to a fertility clinic. The doctor there suggested IUI (intrauterine insemination) but cautioned us to not get our hopes up. We’d probably need to consider IVF (in vitro fertilization), and we would likely have to use an egg donor for it to succeed. But we tried everything before IVF: more scans, some slightly more uncomfortable tests, self-administered injections, and a series of intra-muscular injections administered by my husband. No baby. Some out-patient surgery. Still no baby.

The financial costs so far are around $3,000 in co-pays, which feels like a lot of money. (We had no idea what was coming.) Most appointments end with me crying and going home to lie under a blanket and watch Gilmore Girls.

At least, I tell myself, my husband and I are closer than ever. A man that can make you laugh while injecting you with a giant needle is a keeper.

We moved to Washington DC and started seeing a new doctor. She reviewed our records and quickly got to the point: the last stop before I give up on carrying a child myself is IVF with a donor egg. The procedures are not covered by insurance. The cost begins at $30,000 for one round of treatment. We went home with a login and password for the clinic’s database of egg donors. This time, I have to hand the remote to my husband to start Gilmore Girls because I’m sobbing too much to see.

At this point, I feel lonely. All my close friends and family members who would like a child either have one or are just about to. I feel as if my body has betrayed me. I feel unattractive, like less of a woman. I feel guilty — is spending all this money to have a baby selfish? Is it irresponsible to take out a loan to finance an elective medical procedure equivalent to a nice car or the down payment on a house? Adoption is certainly not off the table, but it’s at least as expensive as that first round of IVF and could take years, if we want an infant. But adoption isn’t the answer—at least for now—because I want the chance to carry our baby.

It took a couple of weeks, but my husband and I eventually sat down to review potential donors. There weren’t many, but the lack of options helped make our choices simpler. The donor coordinator instructed us to pick two or three potential donors. Our first choice looked like a member of my family and even has my dark complexion with the blue eyes I hoped our baby would inherit from my husband and father. Our second choice looked nothing like either of us but has a wide, toothy smile similar to mine. Our third choice resembled my sister-in-law. Maybe people will think my husband has particularly strong genes?

The entire exercise of selecting a donor only took about a little over an hour. By the end, I felt more hopeful than I have in a long time. Donor egg success rates range from 55 to 78 percent, depending on the recipient and the clinic. Those are okay odds, right? Whether or not we are successful depends on timing, on science, on luck. Like a car or a house, there are loan options. Hopefully at the end of it all, the expense will end up as a simple (albeit large) line item in our monthly budget. I know we are very lucky to be able to say that and even luckier to be able to afford it. There are only thirteen states that have insurance mandates to cover infertility, and few employee insurance plans offer coverage.

People say that there’s never a perfect time to have a child, and that’s true. But infertility presents a very particular tangle of grief, love, and finances that force you to starkly consider the answer to a question that truly only presents itself a few times in a lifetime: what do you want? And what will you do to get it?

Liz Pickett lives in Washington DC.

This story is part of The Billfold’s I Want It Now series.

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