home pregnancy test – The Great Pudding Club Hunt

After two years of trying to conceive unsuccessfully I reckon I am getting quite good at this two week wait malarky. Admittedly, I’m a bit rusty at it. So in light of my previous post where I declared my new year’s resolution: I will embrace time, I decided to start thinking about my next two week wait for IVF cycle 2. Now, I know that I will not be doing anything ‘extreme’ or ‘partying like it’s 1999’….but that doesn’t mean I can’t plan for some fun! right??!

Evening Fun Activities (i.e. post work)

Self-Pampering – Mud mask, jacuzzi bubbles bath, trashy magazine, a bar of chocolate (something fancy like) cosy pyjamas and early to bed.

New food (2 nights) – Cook or bake something outrageously random for dinner that requires some new cooking skill! Like working with pastry or something equally different. Glug it down with a random new TV programme from Netflix or Amazon Prime. Sadly no alcohol to glug.

Fun with friends – hang out with friends, either invite them over for take-away (take-out) dinner or try somewhere new together.

Fun with family – I can’t really do this well, but I will spend some time writing a couple of letters to my family back in the UK.

Meet some new people – go to one of my local social and sports club nights, make an effort to be sociable!!!

Crafty and creative (2 nights) – do some knitting (including teach myself a new stitch and practice it), start/continue my new painting (it’s a secret what I am planning to paint!!!)

Date night with hubby – Trip to cinema or rent a DVD with lots and lots of popcorn and some BIG SNUGGLES.

Blog focus night – discover some new blogs and write a new blog post (perhaps from my collection of ideas I have left over from NaBloPoMo 15).

Weekend Fun Activities

Well there is potentially only one weekend I will need to keep busy for!

Road trip to Charlotte, North Carolina (to include going to a Basketball game, a walking tour, perhaps a nice meal out and a trip to Lemur Land on way back!!!!). I am pretty excited about this road trip. My Birthday present was tickets to see the Charlotte Hornets play the Washington Wanderers. I don’t support any particular team, I just really wanted to see basketball game!!! It was perfectly planned by Chris.

I looked back at all my previous blog posts that were tagged with the 2 week wait (2WW)…I think the key for me is to keep myself busy, even if it means I am just ‘planning’ to relax and pamper 🙂

Ohhhh I should also mention that I have ZERO home pregnancy tests in the house! I used them all up last time and did not replace them. So no sneaky testing will be happening this time around!!!

Do you have any other tips for the 2WW?

I have created a new page on my site that sums up all the costs of our infertility journey so far. I will keep this up to date as much as possible…I have copied the text from it and pasted it below (or here is the link to the page)

We are very lucky that our medical insurance includes coverage for the treatment of infertility, including IUI and IVF.

We are being open and honest about these costs because it is important for people to understand the difference having insurance coverage can make. Only 15 states in the US make it mandatory for insurance providers to cover infertility treatment, and even some of those are extremely limited. There is much debate on whether infertility should be covered as an essential health benefit. There are many campaigns ongoing to change state law in this regard (www.resolve.org)

There is definitely a lot to be said about the psychology and stress to infertile couples over spending this vast amount of money if they do not have insurance coverage for infertility. Chris and I find this process stressful enough as it is without the added burden of the actual cost. I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like without coverage. At each stage of our journey we have had to get approval from our insurance company and with having an ‘unexplained’ diagnosis we have always been nervous that they will not cover us. However, we have been fortunate so far. Fingers crossed they will cover our IVF too.

Item	Full cost	Insurance covered?	Final cost to us
Ovulation Kit (pack of 20) x3	$70.00	No	$70.00
Pregnancy Tests (various types) x4	$85.00	No	$85.00
Basal Thermometer x1	$13.00	No	$13.00
Pre-seed Lubricant x1	$24.00	No	$24.00
Chris blood tests	$572.00	Yes	$10.25
Dani blood tests	$560.00	Yes	$14.43
Reproductive Endocrinologist Consulting Fees (Doctor visits) x3	$340.00	Yes	$5.85
Ultrasounds x4	$900.00	Yes	$71.72
Anti-biotics for HSG	$15.97	Yes	$1.60
Sperm Analysis	$110.00	Yes	$1.53
HSG	$835.00	Yes	$29.18
Letrozole x3	$8.53	Yes	$0.86
Ovidrel x3	$371.16	Yes	$37.11
IUI x3	$765.00	Yes	$36.81
Sperm Wash x3	$320.00	Yes	$16.80
Progesterone suppositories x3	$147.00	No	$147.00
Running Total*	$5,136.66		$565.14

A note about our healthcare insurance. We pay a 10% co-pay for each bill of the ‘in-network’ cost, not necessarily 10% of the whole cost. Our current infertility clinic (or ‘provider’ as it is also called) is ‘in-network’ so we get extremely preferable rates; for example our new doctor visit it was $190.00, our insurance paid $0, so we paid $0. This is because our insurance company has negotiated these types of ‘bulk’ discounts in advance with our provider.

Choosing an ‘out of network’ provider can increase overall costs. There is one other fertility clinic in our area we could have chosen, but is out of network. It was something we considered, but we went on recommendation and did not think too much about this at the beginning.

Currently my insurance premium is ~$500 a month, plus my employer contributes ~$1100 a month, this covers both Chris and I for all medical expenses including dental and optical.

*As of 10th May 2015