Back in the bitter

So, the facts first: My husband and I had a long talk Wednesday night, and we decided to go straight to IVF. I played phone tag with Dr. SF all day yesterday, and finally connected with his nurse, who is going to put me in touch with the IVF coordinator. I'm also supposed to schedule a consult with Dr. SF so we can discuss the IVF plan in more detail. I have a call in to the finance department to try to figure out exactly what my insurance will cover. (I have $10,000 in IVF coverage, not including meds which for some reason are covered for injectible IUI but not IVF. Not clear how many cycles--or what percentage of one cycle, given how pricey IVF is here--that would cover.)

Emotionally--bleah. The whole detached, not bitter, not caring too much thing I had going on? Quickly disappearing. See, given the fact that we want a second child but are not desperate to have one, if I were normally fertile we would just let nature take its course, and if I got pregnant, great, but we wouldn't feel this pressure to Do Something About It. Even if I were anovulatory but didn't have a fucked up uterus, we could feel comfortable risking another injectible IUI. But no--the only good option, given the necessity of avoiding multiples and our strong desire not to selectively reduce, is to do IVF. We could try another round or two of Clomid, but given my historically poor response to Clomid, we'd probably just be wasting time and money. And so even though just a week ago I was saying to myself that I didn't know how far I was willing to go to try to have a second child, the fact of the matter is that if we want another child, we pretty much have to plunge into an expensive, invasive, emotionally rocky course of treatment.

And yeah, I resent the hell out of that.

Alexa and JV mentioned letrozole, which to be perfectly honest I had completely forgotten about as an option (see how well the detached not-caring thing was going?). I'd had one follicle on the sole letrozole cycle I did four years ago, but that was at another clinic. I don't know what the latest is on letrozole--I remember I did that one cycle and then a study came out linking letrozole to birth defects and so my RE at the time decided better to be safe than sorry. But at any rate, I did ask the nurse and she said letrozole cycles are uncommon at my current clinic, but they have been done, so I will at least ask about that as an option when I have my consult.

In the meantime, here's a question for those of you who have done IVF: How much did your big box o'meds cost you, if you paid out of pocket? My insurance covers fertility meds for IUI but not for IVF, so I'm on the hook for that. The Follistim from my IUI only cost me $70 last time ($35 per vial, 1 vial of 600 IU and 1 vial of 300 IU), so I about had a heart attack just now when I went online to see how much it costs out of pocket.