Growing the Bright Family

When we first decided to move to Albuquerque together in 2016 we knew that having a family was a big dream. So big that we really didn’t think it was going to be possible. Queer family-building can be an expensive, long and complicated process. In the U.S., most insurances do not cover any fertility procedures, and even if they happen to provide some coverage, the language used often does not support queer families. The biggest hurdle for queer family building is this expense. We are fortunate to have health insurance through our employer, but our insurance does not cover any fertility treatment.

During the COVID lockdown we really looked at our lives and decided to make having a family a priority. We met with a fertility doctor here and made a plan. Just about two years later Emil was born! Going into this process, we didn’t know how much it would cost or how difficult it would be. We have been blown away by the support of our friends, family, fertility clinic, and birth center here in Albuquerque. We’ve also always known we wanted to have more than one kiddo, only children are their own breed (sorry only children lol). We are both lucky to have grown up with wonderful siblings and believe that sibling love is so powerful. The money raised would help us have another attempt at IVF and make our family building dreams have a chance at becoming a reality.

You might be wondering, is it really $20,000?? The truth is the final cost is much more than that. For us a single round of IVF costs $19,309.63. This does not include the roughly $6,000 in medications (again, not covered by insurance). This also doesn’t include the $1,200 for sperm, $1,500 for additional procedures and $800 for embryo storage (per year!). It’s no joke!

When we originally started down the road of growing our family, we wanted to fund the first round independently. We are both private people and were hesitant in how to reach out to our community about something so personal. It truly does take a village and we are here asking our village for support. We appreciate you all so much.

xoxo,

Annie and Grace