Last week, Dear Abby gave some incredibly ignorant advice. A woman explained that she had "tried four times to have a baby. Because fertility medications cost around $5,000 here in Canada, we have depleted all of our savings and down payment for a home. We are contemplating holding a fundraiser to offset the costs for a fifth try. Your thoughts, please."

Dear Abby could have dissuaded her from asking for financial help in so many thoughtful ways such as giving her other venues for financing fertility treatments or advice on creating budgeting options that she may have not yet considered. She could have mentioned pursing research trials or applying for loans. Instead she said,

"My heart goes out to you, but my gut reaction is negative. If you needed donations for treatment for a life-threatening condition, I might feel differently. I encourage you to explore other options available to you -- including adoption."

Screech.

There is so much wrong with Dear Abby's answer, from her condescending underlying statement about treating infertility (it's not life-threatening, you know, and therefore not worth treating unless you have expendable cash) to her comment that the couple should explore other options (as if their decision was poorly thought out and they were rushing into treatments without regard to any other possibilities) to her misunderstanding of adoption--which with few exceptions is less expensive than the stated $5000 needed for fertility treatments, even taking into consideration adoption taxes and medical write-offs on the backend.

And beyond that, I was under the impression that people should build their families in a way that worked best for them.

While infertility is not life-threatening, it is certainly lifestyle-threatening, and just as we wouldn't dream of telling a person with diminished eyesight (another non-life-threatening condition) that they should explore other options than glasses, we should be careful trying to give advice to another person about family building options without knowing basic information about infertility and funding options.

At the same time, friends and family may not be able to support a person financially to make their family building efforts a possibility and no one wants another person to feel uncomfortable or obligated.

Therefore, I'd like to tackle this woman's call for advice myself.

Dear Contemplating in Canada:

My heart goes out to you because the financial side of infertility is salt on a wound that is already hurting from the emotional and physical sides of the disease. I would caution you from out-and-out fundraising and instead focus first on what you can do on your own to fund your next cycle. Which is not to say that you can't ask family members who have a vested interest in your family building efforts if they could help, explaining the high cost of treatments and your family building efforts thus far.

A good starting point is reading Budgeting for Infertility by Evelina Weidman Sterling and Angie Best-Boss. The book came out earlier this year and though at first I was skeptical at any book about the financial side of infertility, I realized a few pages into the book that the average reader would not only gain back the $16 spent on the book, but would probably save a minimum of several hundred dollars or more over the long run.

It doesn't just give you ways to save money, it gives you ways to understand how things relate to you financially on a personal level. For instance, it isn't helpful to make a statement about shared-risk plans without explaining how they work and who should use them. Financing can never be a one-size fits all approach.

And at the very least, the book helps you think outside the box and consider ways to save money on medications, treatments, and testing. It explains how to navigate insurance companies and how to find clinical trials. It explains fertility grants and scholarships and how to find them. But above all, it gives you the confidence to take charge of the financial side and understand how to budget for treatments.

And above all else, I hope this next cycle works for you. You have my good thoughts.

--Mel

Required Reading:

The Infertility Journey to Motherhood: explains the costs of IVF in Massachusetts, a mandated state.

Infertility on the Brain!: a great post about taxes and medical write-offs.

Mary Katherine Kennedy: the cost of IVF.

Melissa is the author of the infertility and pregnancy loss blog, Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters. She keeps a categorized blogroll of 1900 infertility blogs and writes the daily Lost and Found and Connections Abound, a news source for the infertility blogosphere. Her infertility book, Navigating the Land of If, is currently on bookshelves (May, 2009). She is the keeper of the IComLeavWe (International Comment Leaving Week) list which is currently open for August.