Shopping doctors - going bonkers

[AJCash]

How many fertility clinics/doctors did you shop around at before you settled on who you were going with for treatment?

We've gone to two already and have two phone consults this week with out of state clinics to try to get the best price we can. Might even add a fifth one for good measure as there's another local clinic that's kind of newish and supposed to be reasonable. Still deciding whether we're going to try for an IUI cycle or two before going to IVF or whether we'll go straight to it.

It's definitely getting old just going over my lab reports and not actually committing to a cycle of anything yet, but it's just so expensive that we want to make sure we're spending our money wisely. Getting frustrated because we've been doing all this testing and shopping since June and haven't gotten any closer to actually trying any sort of treatment yet.

 

[ChocolateC]

We went for the only clinic nearby, and I was very happy with them. I also looked around but decided that the expense of flying over multiple times would be too much for us.

I am very glad we went straight to IVF (with ICSI) given DH's sperm issues, even though the clinic said we could try IUI first. Of course every couple has a different situation, but we definitely needed that extra help and got pregnant on our first IVF and are now pregnant again on our second try. Very lucky but also I'm very glad we didn't waste time with IUI since we're already "older" parents and didn't want to wait and wait.

 

[oneof14]

We went to two clinics, one was a convenient location to my home, however that one was NOT the right fit for me.

We had success w/the 2nd clinic we chose, TBH, we actually looked at success rates rather than pricing. We did end up spending lots of money with the combination of the clinics and we were fortunate to have had success after our 3rd IVF, after 4 failed IUI's.

 

[AJCash]

First doctor (in-state) wanted to do IVF right away with intralipids (and they do ICSI and PGS for everyone)

Second doctor (out-of-state) said he was on team IUI since I'm under 35 and my insurance would cover up to six of them (80%), but I did *not* like him at all. He was also trying to claim over 30% success rates for IUI when we have combined factor infertility. It just struck me as being a bit absurd on top of not being very personable.

Third doc (out-of-state) from today said she would go straight to IVF with ICSI and PGS too (no intralipids). She has extremely high success rates - like 70% for women under 35 in her last SART report and the clinic is supposed to be in the top ten for the country.

The two out-of-state docs are only a five hour drive for me so flying's not a problem. We spend a fair amount of time in the area anyway.

Friday's a call with a doc on the other side of the country just because they are *way* less expensive (and include anesthesia in their cost) and we might actually have a chance at doing more than one cycle if we went there - even with flying/hotels. Of course with the other two IVF docs saying they would do ICSI and PGS right off the bat, we'll have to see how that changes things.

The other local clinic I haven't quite decided if I want to do a consult with or not. It's still a maybe. If we could find a place that would do a multiple cycle package or shared risk that would still be under $20k, that would be great, but I'm so tired of wasting all this time. I just want to get started and do something already.

(Which means chances are pretty good we're just going to use the clinic we spoke to today - even if it is more than we were hoping to spend.... but we're gonna talk to at least that last clinic on the other side of the country because the appointment's been scheduled for weeks.)