A good friend of mine who is my age just announced her pregnancy and posted a cute little video of a wiggling ultrasound.
Feelings
I am very happy for her because I know she’s wanted this for a super long time and also because her life is coming together amazingly. (Within the past year, she moved to a warmer country, her mom moved from the states to be closer to her, her husband got inducted into the rock hall of fame, and she bought an AMAZING house that I am looking forward to visiting once I finally have the time and money to go abroad.) They just started trying when they got their house and she apparently got pregnant on the first try!
I am feeling a little forlorn at the same time though. As someone who has never gotten to the “creature on the ultrasound is big enough to wiggle” stage of a pregnancy, it’s hard not to feel sad and wonder when it will be my turn. Just in these less-than-five months since my first miscarriage, seven people I know have announced their pregnancies, all within my age cohort (+/- two years). I am happy for them, but mannnn.
I am having THE WORST time trying to get this progesterone prescription filled.
Summary
I got a call from the “preauthorization department” (of what, I am honestly not sure, maybe the medical group?) from a very young-sounding woman who said that the particular progesterone that my doctor prescribed, Endometrin, is almost never approved and is super expensive (which, yeah, I checked on that, it was $1300). She said that one way for me to get what I need is to not involve the insurance at all but rather find a compounding pharmacy that will compound the suppositories for me and charge less. She said she’d call some places and I should too.
So I called around to five different compounding pharmacies. Most of them don’t even make suppositories. The one that did said it’d be $300 and when I balked at the price, name-dropped some doctor whose name I didn’t recognize and when I said that I didn’t know who that was they were like something something Kardashians. Los Angeles, I swear.
I finally called the preauth chick back to tell her I was striking out, and she said she’d found a place that’ll do it for $165. That’s still really expensive for 48 days of prescription, but it’s better than $300 and a lot better than $1300.
So now I have to hear back from my doctor to make sure she even recommends this non-insurance, non-official-medicine way of doing things.
I know my insurance doesn’t cover infertility but, like, if seems like if I might need a hormone supplement for my body to properly do regular body things, (even if that body thing is procreate), then that should be a thing that they pay for. I feel like, OK, I can take the blame for my shitty eggs because I waited so long and that’s life, but if there’s a hormone thing or a structural thing that is actually wrong with my body it doesn’t make sense to me that the insurance doesn’t cover getting body back into whatever regular non-fucked body condition should be.
Speaking of infertility coverage, yeah, my plan has none, but I found a PDF online that seems to suggest that the type of HMO that I have could have it as a supplement?? IDK even what insurance supplements are or how they work or how I would go about trying to get it added. I didn’t see the option anywhere when I signed up for my plan. Any ideas?
And we’re starting to rethink the idea that we can’t afford IVF if we strike out a third time, pregnancy-wise. After all, we have nearly half of our savings goal for [a house + 3 months expenses] in the bank account, and I just got a raise. I feel like we could wait a little longer for a new home, but not really for a baby. When I first thought that, we were impossibly broke. But we’re not broke anymore. (Negative net worth, sure, but it’s all student loans that I have IBR for.) I’m pretty worried about chromosomal stuff at this point—if my doctor says things look OK in terms of my bloodwork and that she doesn’t spot any reason why I shouldn’t be able to keep supporting pregnancies, I feel like chromosome stuff would be the main issue. So if IVF were to let me perhaps circumvent that by testing, IDK, maybe it’s worth a shot.