Family-building efforts are limited (and sometimes thwarted) by only two things: time and money. To address the latter of these Baby Smiling and I are hosting a blog carnival called The Dollars and $ense of Family Building. At the bottom of this post you’ll see how you, too, can participate.

How did my husband and I come to the financial decisions we did when faced with infertility? First, for new readers, a brief synopsis of our path to parenthood.

We discovered a year after our marriage that things weren’t-a-happenin’ on the baby-making front. Shortly before heading to a two-year teaching stint in the Middle East, we had a diagnosis but no plans for treatment, given our upcoming upheaval.

As it turned out, we shared an apartment building in our host country with a German-trained Lebanese embryologist, as he called himself. With the supreme confidence displayed by carpet-sellers in the souk, he proclaimed, “Maalesh! We will have you pregnant insha’llah.” Which literally means, “No worries! God willing, you will have a baby!” And which actually ended up meaning, “We will poke and prod you unceremoniously and take your money and you will not end up with a baby.”

But at the time we thought we’d hit the luck jackpot because the treatment we required would cost about one-third what we thought it would in our hometown.

A few years later and back at home, we once again revisited our options.  We had very low odds of conception success unless we used all donor material. Given my absolute terror about shots and blood draws and the devastation I experienced at our one IVF failure, we found it easy to decide to spend our last financial and emotional stores not on further treatment, but on adoption.

Now to answer a few questions that are being asked in this blog hop:

How will you handle it if your child asks you, “Mom, how much did I cost?” How would you answer at age 7? At age 18?

This hasn’t happened yet, and my sense is that it won’t. It is more likely that as teenagers, my children (now 8 and 10) may one day ask, “Mom, how much did my adoption cost?”

And I will respond that we paid the agency $X thousand  for them to investigate us and make sure we would be good parents to you, and that some of the money went to helping young women who became pregnant unexpectedly and weren’t sure how to handle their situation. The agency uses the money they have to counsel these pregnant women and help them make a plan either to parent or to place. And that mothers who have babies in hospitals also pay for services of doctors and nurses. And that people aren’t bought and sold, but services can be paid for.

If either of my children were to say, “Mom, how much did I cost?” I would say, “Do you mean how much did it cost to adopt you?” and go from there.

To what extent have finances determined the family-building decisions you have made? How have you able to balance financial considerations against other factors such as medical, ethical, emotional…?

Our decision to stop infertility treatments had less to do with finances (although finances were a big concern) than with other factors, specifically the emotional.  I barely survived that one assisted attempt that ended up in a BFN (big fat no — although it didn’t have a name in those pre-blogging days) and feared that I would not be able to endure having another. I simply did not have it in me to again go through assisted reproduction with such low odds of success. Financial reasons were in line with emotional reasons, and both pointed to No.

Have you considered having ART treatments abroad due to lower cost ? In your decision-making, how did you balance the financial savings against issues like the unknowns of the country, perhaps not speaking the language, and medical practices that may differ from those of your home country? If you did travel abroad for treatments, what was your experience? Would you do it again?

Our travel abroad was coincidental to our fertility woes. We did not deliberately go some place where treatment would be more affordable — we just happened to be there at that time. I have no idea how Dr Embryologist’s methods measured up against what CCRM had available at the time, but he talked a good game about being state-of-the-art. Even though our efforts were not fruitful, I do not now regret our efforts in Syria. I am glad we tried for two reasons: (1) I have clear hind sight and harbor no feelings of “what if” — we tried and we failed; (2) how could be regret any step that led me to my children? ART in Syria was one of those steps (a painful one) that got us to where we are. I am, ultimately, grateful.

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Welcome to the Dollars and $ense of Family Building, a blog carnival in which you are invited to read what others have to say and also contribute your own experience.

This project started with a debate that I facilitated for the Open Adoption Examiner about potential adoptive parents using billboards to connect with expectant parents considering adoption. One of the viewpoints came from first mother Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy, who wrote:

I have too many adult adoptee friends that scoff and joke at their adoption paperwork where they see how much their folks “paid” and speak about what they “cost”. But beneath the joking, there is pain that they were looked at as a product and used in transactions.

Her comment led Baby Smiling In Back Seat to ask me some follow-up questions about the “cost” of different methods of family building. Our discussion grew into an idea to invite other bloggers to join the conversation. What does it mean that money has to change hands in order to bring a child into your family? What role can finances play in determining which path people take and how far that path goes?

Baby Smiling and I have put together a panel of adoption and infertility bloggers with a wide range of experiences. There are participants who have followed strict budgets, those who have spared no expense (and gone broke in the process), and those whose lack of funds have prevented them from pursuing their goals. There are adoptive parents who have used international, domestic, and foster routes. From the infertility side, there are participants whose treatments have been covered in part or in whole by insurance or their government, and many who have had no coverage whatsoever. There are also infertility bloggers who can speak to pursuing treatments internationally, shared risk plans, donor gametes, donor embryos, and surrogacy. In short, we have tried to include the full gamut of experiences regarding “cost.”

We have asked each participant to give some background on their own family building history and then to answer any number of the following questions (we don’t expect you to answer all questions — just the ones that grab you).

1. Consider your now or future children as adults, and consider the fact that you had to spend money to either conceive them or make them part of your family. What effect do you think the latter will have on the former one day? What, do you think, your grown children might feel about the funds it took to create your family?
2. How did/would you handle it if your child asks you, “Mom, how much did I cost?” How would you answer at age 7? At age 18?
3. When calculating the costs of your family building, what do you include? The direct costs are easy (such as RE fees for a cycle or homestudy fees), but what about fees that didn’t directly lead to your child’s existence in your life, such as cycles that didn’t work, adoption outreach avenues that didn’t work, failed adoptions, avenues that were explored (and that cost something) but not pursued, etc.?
4. If two children in a family “cost” different amounts, should that have any significance?
5. To what extent have finances determined the family-building decisions you have made? How have you able to balance financial considerations against other factors such as medical, ethical, emotional…?
6. Has institutional and governmental support for certain family-building paths impacted your choices? For example, ART being covered by insurance, tax deductions for adoption expenses, etc.
7. Have you considered having ART treatments abroad, either due to lower cost or due to certain methods being unavailable or illegal in your own country? In your decision-making, how did you balance the financial savings against issues like the unknowns of the country, perhaps not speaking the language, and medical practices that may differ from those of your home country? If you did travel abroad for treatments, what was your experience? Would you do it again?

The discussion is now open to all of you. Please take the opportunity to write your own blog post addressing these issues and add your link below by June 21 [extended]. We ask that you direct people back here to find other links with this sentence:

Visit Write Mind Open Heart for more perspectives on the Dollars and $ense of Family Building and to add your own link to the blog hop by June 21 [extended], should you want to contribute your thoughts.

Family-building may not be free, but blog hopping is, so enjoy!