Not related to any of your responses to my recent questions and rants - why do we see fertility treatment as ‘optional’?

[ForABabyPanda]

isn’t it so strange that even among the fertility community you get the kind of response (often in kindness, often v subtle) of ‘well what did you expect if you didn’t go private’ when you complain about NHS waiting times, or lack of care & attention,or lack of Choice in treatment, I even say it to myself, I feel guilty. It’s almost as if you and everyone else thinks they’re doing you a favour and you should just take it and shut up. But for what other procedure would you think that? If you had cancer and there were unacceptable delays, you’d be justified in complaining about that. If the menopause drug you need isn’t being offered. If your endo specialist isn’t really an endo specialist. If you are throwing up and go to A&E and are there for 30 hours. Fertility treatment is necessary treatment for a condition just like anything else. We need to stop treating it differently ang demand better. Better care, better number of cycles offered, paid time off work (I’m not getting flipping plastic surgery, so don’t treat it the same).

[Katieloulou1983]

I agree! Haven't experienced so much from within the community, only a friend that conceived naturally gave me the helpful advice to "just pay for it." The cheek!

I'm even beating myself up a little bit... Should I have just paid to go private?! Would I be happily living my life with a baby now, regardless of the cost?

And the work thing is a while other kettle of fish, I'm taking all appts as holiday currently (just started first NHS cycle), and hopefully if im successful will be trying to claim them back retrospectively. They would not be understanding at all. Gah!

Sending hugs 🤗 x

[ForABabyPanda in reply to Katieloulou1983]

yes I also struggle with the guilt of not paying for it. The reason we didn’t was a. I didn’t realise you could still have nhs cycle after private, so I thought it was pointless to waste me one free cycle, currently it’s because I have one in storage and don’t want to create more before I’ve used that one, and more generally I was scared of bankrupting myself chasing this. For it to become an idol. Limiting myself to my nhs goes put a boundary on that. (I have more recently acquired the ability to have one more funded go on work health insurance). It’s not that a baby isn’t work 10k, but you could spend 10k, no baby, another 10k no baby, how many have much more than 20k in savings? And if you do, and you use it on this, it can become a slippery slope as you can end up still childless but in debt or with zero savings. I’m not judging anyone who does this, but just explaining my own boundaries i set to prevent against it. Cos how else do I know when to stop?

[Mudra85]

ForABabyPanda I couldn't agree more. It's a double standard that fertility treatment is seen as this optional thing compared to other medical treatment. On top of being in the awful position of having to do fertility treatment in the first place we often also have to deal with people not seeing it as a genuine medical issue for which medical intervention is necessary. The way I see it is not being able to have children without medical help is not a normal situation, just like having cancer or heart disease or anything else. It may be reasonably common within the general population but it is far from being the norm. No one ever wants to be in the situation of having to undergo public or private medical treatment to have a normal healthy life, just like they don't to have children. Imagine if we thought the same about all medical treatment associated with having children (e.g. pre and postnatal NHS services) because having children isn't a necessity, so I don't understand why fertility treatment to have children is seemingly treated differently by some.

[HollyT7]

I think for us, we’ve been incredibly lucky with our waiting times, I think it was about 3 months from go forms (which got delayed) to our first consultation at the hospital and pretty much got straight to treatment after our investigations, on our last our (right before they put it back in), the nurse comple the our ivf forms, not a great boost before treatment but we were straight to ivf after it failed. Ok our first consultation we got offered out or straight to ivf too. They have been really good in our area. I totally understand this isn’t the case for everyone and in every area which is quite poor. My only complaint would be for paid time off but I’m lucky I get flexi time at work and ended up getting sign off with our second ivf as I sure as hell wasnt going to go through what I felt on our first lot again!

[ForABabyPanda in reply to HollyT7]

how many cycles do you get in your area? We get 1 fresh and one frozen transfer and that’s it! And they can’t even cope with that number!!

[HollyT7 in reply to ForABabyPanda]

so we get 3 iui’s, and one cycle of ivf so 1 fresh transfer and then any frozen ones until you get pregnant. We were super lucky, our fresh transfer got us a bfp but we had an early loss, and our first frozen got us our little boy, then we had to pay for storage and our last frozen embryo which resulted in our second little boy. I thought it was a lot of pressure getting one cycle free (I say free but we pay for our nhs!), so to get only two transfers, if you eve get any for the frozen, but but ten times worse. The whole system is messed up when it comes to ivf and how it’s ‘elective’, makes me feel sick!

[ForABabyPanda in reply to HollyT7]

I think we would have been allowed iui first but weren't allowed to be on two waiting lists so I could t say put me on ivf waiting list but give me iui in meantime, so doctor and we agreed then that doing iui first was a waste of time for us as we didn’t have any structural problems. For us we only have the one frozen but if we had mire, only one of those would have been transferred for free so you’d be liable for transfer costs for the rest. It’s a horrendous system!

[McQueeny]

I totally agree. And I also think it’s broader than that - about fertility in general….. when people who can’t conceive are told ‘just relax, it’ll happen when it’s the goth time, maybe it’s not meant to be’, etc - how cruel is that?? Would you tell someone with a cancer diagnosis ‘maybe you were just not meant to live beyond 45’??

Make me so mad.

[ForABabyPanda in reply to McQueeny]

nope & nope

[HollyT7 in reply to McQueeny]

or if your over a certain age or have already beat it once that they aren’t going to treat you again but if you do want it, you’ll have to pay anything over £10k depending on what you fancy trying, might still not work though 🙄

[ForABabyPanda in reply to HollyT7]

sometimes with private insurance tho - my private insurance paid for me to have my ears suctioned once, but said never again

[Marisa32]

You are absolutely right! I live in the US and unless you are the lucky small percentage of people whose job health insurance provides IVF coverage - you are frankly out of luck because 50,000$ per cycle is not an option for most people. Unfortunately, the religious crowd here heavily lobbied to keep IVF coverage out of health insurance because their "GOD" wouldn't approve. 🙄