[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to Start to Finish Motherhood, a podcast for those thinking or already single mothers by choice. Just looking for practical advice for navigating life's relationships.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: When you decide to have children on.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Your own, it doesn't mean that you're completely alone. I'm Aisha Jenkins and I'm partnering with.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: You every step of your journey.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: So this episode was recorded back in 2020 and this was also during the pandemic.
Let's see, I was fresh off of having delivered my second child, so all.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Of the numbers and the data was.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Fresh in my mind at the time. So I had to re look up these stats. We had some information that we offered in this episode. I wanted to give some updates because the day to day life in the US has changed radically and irreparably post pandemic. So let me update these stats for you. In this episode we cover success rates. So the updated stats for pregnancy rates by procedure and those procedures are the ones that require a reproductive endocrinologist. That's called an re.
And so we have the IUI pregnancy rates and then what I've done is I broke it down by age group similar to what was done in episode two back in 2020.
So we have IUI pregnancy rates, we have IVF pregnancy rate. And then I have an update on the live birth rates which can vary from did I get a positive home pregnancy test and then did I get a live birth and a take home baby? Okay, so updated stats for pregnancy rate by procedures. The two procedures that I'm covering are the ones that require the intervention by reproductive endocrinologists. And this is called an RE in the SNC spaces. And it's broken down, I broke it down by age and then the approximate by age group based on per IUI cycle. And this is to match the original episode. So folks who are 35 and under have between a 15 and 20% pregnancy rate per IUI cycle.
If you're between 35 and 37, that is a about 10 to 15% per IUI cycle. If you'm 38 to 40, that's about 7 to 10% success rate per IUI cycle. And then if you're over 40, it's about 5% or lower pregnancy rate per IUI cycle. And then IVF pregnancy rates. If you are 35 and under, positive pregnancy test rate 55%.
If you are 35 to 37, you have a 45% chance of having a positive pregnancy test. If you're 38 to 40, you have a 33% chance. And then if you are 40 and over, you have a 90% chance of having a positive pregnancy test. Okay. And that is slightly different than the live birth rates. So for IUI, if you are 35 and under, you have a 61% chance of having a live birth.
And if you're 35 to 37, it's about 48, 49%.
If you are 38 to 39, it's about a 24%. And then if you're 40 or over, it's about 11 or 12% live birth rate. And these are all coming from the Journal of Public Med.
Okay, and so let's see.
Live birth rates for IVF. If you are 35 and under, you have a 56% live birth rate. If you're 35 to 37, you have a 32% chance of a live birth. If you're 38 to 40, you have a 23% chance of a live birth. And if you are 40 and over, you, you have a 12% chance of a live birth. Okay. And then stats by race. From what I've been able to glean from peer reviewed papers so far up to this point, there's still no publicly available success stats that have been disaggregated by race. I had been able to pull information or numbers from peer reviewed research papers here and there, but but nothing really consistent. So I would love to see the industry do better by disaggregating the reproductive stats by race.
[00:04:59] Speaker C: Let's see.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: Cost of sperm. So back in 2013, when I first began my journey, I paid $795 for open ID sperm. And so I wanted to do an apples to apples comparison. So I looked at the same sperm bank that I used for my first pregnancy and they are now charging $1,195 for an open ID vial of sperm. So that's roughly not really, but let's just go ahead and say it's about a 50% increase, right? It's statistically significant.
The cost of IVF when I was trying was about $11,000 to $18,000. Now it's increased to about 15 to $25,000.
And let me tell you, I am still paying off the debt for my family building, which began in 2013.
So that's my update. So let's get into this episode.
[00:06:02] Speaker C: Hi everybody. So for this episode, I'm going to discuss two common ways that SMCs conceive. One is through IUI and the other way is through IVF.
But before we get into defining those two terms, I do Want to have an upfront disclaimer that the information and the opinions I'm going to share are opinions unless otherwise specified. I just want to state that up front.
All right, So I will tell you. When I started this process, I was a novice. I knew nothing. And so I showed up at a fertility clinic, and I really did everything that they told me to do. When I showed up, I was like, I want to conceive on my own. I want ivf.
And then they explained to me, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've seen your type before. So they go through the whole explanation of the process. And so it was in that chair that I realized that there was another cheaper option, which is iui.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: So let's start with the definition of IUI versus ibs.
[00:07:04] Speaker C: Okay, so the definition of iui, which stands for inner uterine insemination, is a fertility treatment that involves placing sperm inside the woman's uterus to facilitate fertilization.
It is part art, part science. Right. And so they really don't know how your body's going to respond. We don't know how our body is going to respond until we are actually actively trying.
And so they're going to be like, let's just see where we are. And so you go through your first iui, and then there's ivf, which is in vitro fertilization.
And so that is the definition is that's the process of fertilization by extracting eggs, retrieving a sperm sample, and then manually combining the egg and sperm in a laboratory dish. And then the embryos create it and then transfer it back into the uterus.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: And I know that there is something called ici.
So how does ICI differ from iui?
ICI stands for intracervical insemination. And it's essentially where you go through the vagina and you place sperm so close to the cervix as possible.
And ideally, the idea is that the sperm will swim into the uterus and fertilize the egg. With iui, the sperm is placed directly into the uterus. What are the costs associated with a typical IVF cycle?
[00:08:41] Speaker C: A typical IVF cycle will cost anywhere between 11 and 15,000 per cycle.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: What are the chances of a live birth by age group?
[00:08:53] Speaker C: So the chances of a live birth if you are under 35 is 52%.
If you're between 35 and 37, it's a 38% chance of a live birth. If you're between 38 and 40, it's a 23% chance of a live birth. And if you're over 40, it's a 7.6% chance of a live birth.
How old were you when you had your first child?
Very good questions. Age wise, I was 38 when I had my first, I was 39. When I started trying, I was 39 and a half and I started trying for my second and we didn't anticipate there was going to be a problem.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: Did you encounter any difficulties when switching to ivf?
[00:09:37] Speaker C: The number of eggs I had was great for my age. I think it was like 2.01. So anytime a fertility doctor saw that, they were like, oh, that's great, this will be easy.
I had two vials of my daughter's donor pre purchased and storage. I did two IUIs before I switched to IVF because I didn't get pregnant at all. And so my doctor and I were certain that it was just a matter of time trying to find the right egg.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: All right, what are the success rates between IUI and IVF based on age?
[00:10:09] Speaker C: So if you're under 35, you have a 15% chance of getting pregnant per IUI cycle.
There's a 54% chance per IVF cycle for the age group 35 to 37. IUI, you have a 10% chance per cycle for IVF, you have a 40% chance of success, which equals a live birth for 30 to 40. For IUI, you have an 8% chance versus a 28% chance with IVF.
And then if you're over 40, you have a 9% chance with IVF. You using own eggs, did you discover.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Anything surprising in your research?
[00:10:50] Speaker C: Here are two things that I found out about the data. One, it's hard to find data just on iui and so I had to go to a specific fertility clinic. When I talked about the resources that I used, I had to use a particular clinic to capture IUI stats and then the race component.
So it was really hard to find stats broken down by race. Now I will say what I started to find in more recent articles and more recent research is that is starting to change.
There are sites out there, there are organizations out there who are specifically trying to capture this data. So interesting stuff to come. What I found interesting also was so you can get an Anonymous donor or OpenID donor. And from what I saw, OpenID was more expensive and then education background became more expensive the further you went up in education. So Bachelor's, Master's, PhD, it got more expensive, the more educated the donor was.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: To what extent did cost factor into your decision of conception path of sperm or any of this.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: So sperm is expensive and IUI procedures are expensive. Finances did play into it for me. I paid out of pocket for maybe 80% because my insurance did cover anything that fell under diagnostics and then any medications where fertility meds was its alternative use and not its primary use. So some of the meds are used for other things.
So I will say my first time I, I conceived using IUI on my second try. So it was not the financial hit that it could have been. I purchased one vial of sperm and so we were good, easy peasy. Second time around I had exhausted everything. Now I had always been fairly frugal and always saved for a rainy day and I worked a second part time job and saved up that money. So I had money reserves to pull from, but I had no idea the extent of the reserves. And I remember crying to myself when the first IUI didn't work, like what if the second one doesn't work? I can't afford IVF when apparently I could afford IVF three times.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Did fertility costs impact your other financial plans?
[00:13:17] Speaker C: So like I said, my daughter was one when I started trying for the second. And so I didn't have, my insurance didn't cover anything. So I had to be real creative about how I went about finding funds to finance my second try. And so I used a combination of savings, 401k loan, low interest, credit cards. And so I just did the best that I could. And there who are considering it, people will tell you, oh, I wasn't going to do it if I had to tap into my retirement, I wouldn't have done it if I had to do this. People will say having children is a gamble, like you're not going to get a real return on investment if you're looking for monetary, there's not always a rhyme or reason. But I will say you really want to think about tapping into those alternative resources and exhausting your savings. Because once baby is here, you only get more bills and more expenses on top of that because childcare doesn't stop, you still need to work, right? Groceries will double, babies need clothes, they need gear, they need all of this stuff. So you have to make sure whatever financial moves you're making in order to have this baby that you can also pay for everything that comes with that baby afterwards. And I don't have a windfall inheritance that was never coming my way, that wasn't factoring in. And so when I looked at 400 1k loans and additional consumer credit card debt, I had to be able to be sure that I could pay childcare.
Those other debts, albeit those debts were short term, I would have probably gotten merit increases in between.
But I needed to make sure that I was able to to sustain the finances of my household while pursuing SNC hood. So for me, as I got further into the three years, I really had to have heart to heart conversations with myself.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: What improvements do you hope to see for Black women in fertility treatments? Being a Black snc?
[00:15:17] Speaker C: Hopefully we start to make this proactive investment in improving IVF success rates for Black women. Hopefully we start to see trends where we can work with doctors who look like us. There's a change in how we're treated in our success rates in traditional other types fields of medicine. Hoping that we see similar success rates if we start working with doctors in fertility specialties that look like us so they tend to hear our concerns differently.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: Well, hopefully you found this to be another informative episode.
[00:15:52] Speaker C: Thank you for tuning in.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to Start to Finish Motherhood with Aisha. If you want to keep the conversation going, follow Start to Finish Motherhood on Instagram or email
[email protected] if you love this episode, please share it with anyone who's thinking of becoming a single mother by choice. Anyone who's already parenting as a single mother by choice choice and just looking for advice on navigating it all. Or a friend or family member who's looking to support someone else's single mother by choice journey. Until next time.
[00:16:29] Speaker C: Bye now.
