FERTILITY: 5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

In my case, I wish that someone had said, ‘You might not want a kid in your 20s, but there might be a time later on when you do, so think about how to prepare yourself for that.’ For instance, now, young women have so many more tools at their disposal. There is so much more information out there they can seek. They just don’t know where to start.

No one is telling you to go to this site and look at these fertility charts. And, they’re not telling you that you might want to think about freezing your eggs while they’re in their optimal quality. By the time you get to your 30s, that quality starts to decline, so maybe you want to freeze them in your 20s so you have more options later on. Egg freezing isn’t a guarantee. It might not work out because you’ll be relying on reproductive science because you won’t be doing it naturally. It’s important for people to have open conversations with their partner because both members of a couple should not feel like they’re alone in their pursuit [of having children]. And, they shouldn’t feel like their partner is just going along with their pursuit; it should be a mutual decision. I think you can learn a lot about who you’re with by having these conversations. I think too often couples suffer when they struggle to have a child because they haven’t thought proactively about the impact that pursuit might have on their relationship. They’re kind of winging it, saying it’ll either work out or it won’t.

But, it takes a big psychological toll when it doesn’t work out. So, I’ve seen so many relationships, including mine, that fell apart during that pursuit of parenthood, and I often wonder, “Are there ways we could have prevented those minefields by talking in advance about what we really wanted and what we were willing to go through, instead of dealing with it in the moment?” There are some times when it’s very good to wing it and be in the moment, but then there are other times — when the psychological toll is great — that it’s better to be prepared in advance.”

5. CHECK YOUR INSURANCE.

“Make sure you have good health insurance, and be aware of the policies surrounding fertility and reproduction where you live and work. Insurance is such a quagmire, and it really varies state-to-state and policy-to-policy. But typically, unless you’ve been diagnosed with infertility (which was the case in my situation), [fertility] tests are often considered elective.

IVF costs $10,000 to $20,000 per cycle, and when you consider that it takes multiple cycles, [it can be several times that amount]. If you live in one of the 15 states that mandates infertility coverage, it’s likely that your IVF treatments will be covered. But, there are limitations on the amount of IVF cycles you can do and the amount of time in which you can do them. Like, you can only do a certain amount of cycles within a certain time period. It’s not easy to figure out. And, it’s not only the financial cost, but the emotional cost.