IVF confusion, advice needed!

[noobparents]

Hi all, just wondering if anyone has advice on IVF. We live in Surrey where the threshold for funding is having been trying for 3 years (which for us will be October) and we are desperate to get started so looking at self funding.

We had our first meeting this week which was full of confusion and hidden costs that popped up and I’m wondering if anyone has experience about this. Should we wait and go with govt funded at a different hospital? Should we continue with the hospital who are taking self funded route we started this week or should we look at private options? Would love the benefit of anyone’s experience.

One big point of confusion is that originally we were told that if we self funded (still with nhs), we could do 1 round and if it failed, we could switch to the govt funded option as the 3 year mark would have passed. However we just heard this week that we would have to keep using the embryos we generate at a cost of £1400 each until they were used up, rather than switch to govt funded.

So there’s confusion about what we will be able to do and also the costs - The self fund nhs hospital have told us it will cost £3500, then revealed the cost of ICSI (another 600), then that the drugs on top of that are around £1000, and that depending on how many embryos we generate we will have to pay another 1400 as mentioned earlier.

I know it’s bad to talk about money but it’s a reality we have to figure out, and right now I don’t know who to ask or call.

[Cinderella5]

Unfortunately thats correct the rules for most places seems to be if you do a private cycle you have to use all the embryos from that cycle before you could move on which of course if you get a few embryos and have to transfer a few times you are looking the cost of meds and transfer of a frozen embryo each time. What Im not sure about is whether if you went somewhere else for treatment would the new place know if you had frosties or not....bit sneaky of course?! Costs have heaps to do with decisions in IVF whether it sounds crass or not its a very real part of doing treatment so dont feel bad about that! Tough to know what to do. If age is on your side it might be worth waiting for funding. Good luck with your decision.xx

[KiboXX]

Hi noobparents,

It’s such a difficult decision. I’m really unlucky that I live in an area with no nhs funding so I only ever had the option to go private, we also needed ICSI which is expensive (although I would say £600 is very good for that, we’ve always paid £1000-£1200 per cycle for it!). I would say we’ve spent around approx £5-7k per fresh round once you’ve added everything together.

If I had the opportunity to have nhs funding I definitely would have taken it. I have two friends who live one county over from me and both got a NHS funding, which they were both lucky enough to have successful pregnancies from whereas it’s taken me four private fresh rounds and one private frozen round to get there. It’s cost us roughly £25k to date.

I completely understand wanting to get things going though but just wanted to give you an idea of the cost impact of private treatment xx

[Florencenightingale]

Sorry not sure on the rules, but to give you an idea. We had IVF (not icsi) and including meds (short protocol) we paid roughly £7.5k for one round. Then freezing was extra, but we didn't have any to freeze.

Your decision will really all depend on whether you have the money to do that. Obviously private is much quicker, it also depends how quickly you want it, as for most of us, we want it like yesterday.

Good luck with whatever you decide xxx

[Sorax]

It’s hard if you have the money go private will probably be quicker. If that’s a concern go to your gp and see if you can get referred on the nhs. We did one round nhs funded and was successful. Obviously because of Covid things are a lot slower now. Nhs will require you having all the tests aswell which takes a while. Have you had any tests done?🤦🏽‍♀️ it’s a hard one I guess it just comes down to money unfortunately 😣💖

[noobparents]

Thanks everyone for your replies so far, it helps a lot to hear from real people who have been going through this too. In answer to your question Sorax we have had our tests done - we are one of those 'undiagnosed infertile' couples where they can't find anything wrong - only small exception is my wife's hyperthyroidism which they started medicating her for to get her levels back to normal which they have been for some time now.

We also had the first blood tests and her first scan as the start of the treatment this week, during which they found 'chocolate cysts' on her ovaries which obviously is worrying too, and they told us will require a more intensive dosage down the line for the actual IVF process.

[Running79]

That costing is really cheap!! We have had two rounds of ICSI which have both failed.

Our first round cost £12500, our second round cost £9000, the second round was cheaper as we had our embryos PGT-A tested, which told us they were chromosomally abnormal, so couldn’t be implanted. A FET at our clinic is £1650 a go.