The IVF journey can be daunting especially when you don’t know where to start. Here are a few tips I want to share that helped me in my journey and I hope they help you too!
1) Call around to different pharmacies for the cost of medications.
Your physician’s office will always have their preferred pharmacy, however it’s not always the cheapest. Ask the pharmacy to run the medications through your insurance and without your insurance. Believe it or not, sometimes there are coupons and it’s actually cheaper to get it without insurance (my husband gave me this idea even though I’m the one in healthcare)! We ended up saving close to $1000+ and every dollar counts since, as you know, the IVF journey is not cheap!
When you call the pharmacy, the pharmacist or technician will NOT tell you it’s cheaper without insurance because they sometimes don’t know and are so used to running everything through insurance! I’ve experienced this several times throughout my journey. I am not trying to bash on them, I am a pharmacist myself, but I just wanted to make people aware. Make sure to QUESTION the costs of medications!
2) If you work full time, find a fertility doctor that has flexible hours!
A lot of places close at 3:00 PM and that just didn’t work for me. Once you start the process, there are times when you will be going to the office every other day and I was thankful that my office was open until 5:00 PM.
Also, try to find a physician within your insurance (sometimes clinics are covered and specific physicians are not covered from clinics, so do all the research). My physician was supposed to change over to my insurance but unfortunately that never happened and resulted in a lot of out of pocket that could have been avoided. However, I love my physician and didn’t want to switch midway through the process.
3) Lastly, I suggest you get a shared calendar, like Google Calendar, or something similar so you and your partner can keep track of important dates and appointments.
Plenty of important things end up coming up, such as getting documents notarized, lab appointments, regular checkups, etc. We were able to go to all appointments together except the lab work appointments. Having my partner there gave me comfort that I’m not doing everything by myself. It’s a journey you take together even though you will be going through the physical journey all by yourself! Of course this is not always possible due to schedules, but at least this way you can plan the big dates together like retrieval and implantation!
Hope these few tips help you on your journey! Feel free to message me through Instagram @bollyvoguestyle for any questions and follow for updates. IVF journey to come on the next blog post!
XOXO,
Sanna Khoja
