Hurdle Ep 6 - Is the "Price of Hope" standing between you and your child?

[00:00:00] You aren't here because you dreamed of donor eggs. You're here because you're a fighter who has likely hit a wall and every other road to your child seems to have been blocked. I know that suffocating feeling of looking at the price tags and wondering if a bank balance is the only thing standing between you and being a mother.

But I also know the grief. If you're in that stage where you don't even know what you wanna do yet, please hear me, start saving now. Give your future the freedom of actually having a choice. We lived tiny for ten years to fund this infertility journey. That's ten years of being a professional in my forties, living in a space that others judge quite quickly while I poured every cent into hope.

It's isolating, it's frustrating, and you feel less than everybody else. You feel guilty spending a single dollar on a takeout [00:01:00] coffee just to feel normal. It's that normalcy tax we pay just to keep our sanity. But don't let that guilt win. You are building a different kind of future, even if it looks tiny right now

If I could go back, I would have moved to donor eggs much sooner. I spent so much time and money on IVF rounds with my own eggs that could have funded this path with much better odds. We have to be realistic. If you are an average person with an average income, your own eggs do have a limit. And of course, if you want siblings, you must start early.

When we hit the financial wall, we couldn't afford the seventy thousand guaranteed live birth packages. It just wasn't possible, so we pivoted. We did a single cycle with a blastocyst guarantee included, and then we bought another blastocyst guarantee for three thousand dollars. At [00:02:00] forty-seven, any chance was better than no chance.

Remember, it's okay to pivot to what you can afford just to get started. Don't let the need for a perfect package stop you from taking any first step. When you finally look at those donor databases, try to shift your perspective. You aren't shopping. You're looking for the woman providing the map that leads to your baby.

But be ready for those last mile costs that clinics may not always highlight. Beyond the egg lot, you have uncovered tests like the SHG, which is the sonohysterogram, storage fees which have to be paid, of course, before you ship your eggs,, even payment wire fees, and of course, travel. And this is a huge thing for my fellow contract workers.

Factor in the income tank. Every hour you or your partner spends at a clinic is money you aren't making. Plus, remember, you need to budget for prepping your body [00:03:00] three months before the transfer, and that's both of your bodies. This is your baby's first home, and that prep costs money. By the time we hit ten weeks pregnant, we were forty thousand all in.

I'm telling you this so you aren't blindsided, but so you can be prepared. Yes, the road is hard, and the sacrifices are real. You might even bring your baby home to a much tinier space than you ever imagined. But every time I look at my child, I don't think about the interest rates, the income we lost, or the house we don't have now.

I think about the fact that I made it. This journey leads to the best graduation you will ever have, possibly the moment you stop being a patient and start being a mom. You don't have to do this alone. I put everything that helped us in the vault at donoreggdiary.com. We're building these nests together if you want to, and they are [00:04:00] worth every sacrifice.