Real Data
What We Paid
Yeah, people talk about how expensive fertility treatment is. But I don't know if anyone's crazy enough to actually lay the whole thing out, receipt by receipt, the way I'm about to. So buckle up. And real talk: this isn't even all of it. Five years in, I know I missed stuff — random copays, pharmacy runs, and a whole lot of our 2024 Canada travel I just never wrote down. This is as much as I could piece back together, and even this half-tracked mess is knocking on $150,000. The actual number is higher. And not one single cent of it was covered by insurance. Not one.
$140,000+
And we're still not parents as of September 2026 — hopeful to change soon.
- $140,000+
- total spent
- $0
- covered by insurance
- 3
- clinics
- 5
- transfers (4 to me, 1 to surrogate)
and honestly closer to $150,000 once you count all the 2024 Canada travel I never tracked — and still climbing, because our surrogacy journey isn't over yet.
Summary by Phase
| Phase | Year | Approx. USD |
|---|---|---|
| Diagnostic workup (office visits, ultrasounds, bloodwork) | 2021 | $590 |
| IUI — Kaiser Vacaville | 2022 | $2,159 |
| Retrieval #1 + IVF + Transfer #1 — Kaiser (incl. meds, PGT) | 2022 | $28,850 |
| Fertility supplements (estimated — not well documented)Estimate, not a receipt | 2022 | ~$4,000 |
| Transfers #2 & #3, ERA, ReceptivaDx, meds — Kaiser | 2023 | $12,231 |
| Fertility supplements | 2023 | $6,000 |
| Retrieval #2 + Victory intake, PGT, embryo shipping | 2024 | $17,585 |
| Transfer #4 + immune protocol (LIT, PRP, Neupogen, Intralipids), Fertilysis | 2024 | $11,688 |
| Fertility supplements | 2024 | $7,470 |
| Retrieval #3 — CNY (egg donor, meds, PGT, monitoring, travel) | 2026 | $23,165 |
| Surrogacy (transfer, monitoring, travel, legal, coordination) | 2025–26 | $32,203 |
| TOTAL | ~$142,739 |
Every documented amount here comes from an actual receipt or statement. The one exception is the 2022 supplements line, which is my best estimate — I know I was buying them, I just didn't track it. Anything I paid in Canadian dollars is shown converted to USD. And this still doesn't include all our 2024 Canada travel, so the real number is higher than what you see.
Itemized Breakdown
| Date | Item | USD |
|---|---|---|
| 5.20.2021 | Blood test | $16 |
| 6.19.2021 | Office visit | $30 |
| 8.2.2021 | Office visit | $30 |
| 8.2.2021 | Ultrasound — cyst & suspected endo found | $315 |
| 9.2.2021 | Office visit | $50 |
| 10.1.2021 | Ultrasound + office visit | $165 |