IVF Treatment Baby Fund

Hello to all of our friends and family. Those of you closest to us already know that we have been going through a journey to start a family of our own. We’ve had quite a bit of set backs and struggles during this journey.

We’ve been seeing fertility specialists and have been made aware that we are working with very low odds. Despite these odds we have continued to push forward and we accomplished 1 round of IVF treatment. Though our first round wasn’t successful, we’re hopeful that we might have more success with additional rounds of treatment.

Most people don’t know this, but IVF is very expensive. When working with the specialists in Albuquerque, we were looking at a cost of nearly $30,000 per round. We were fortunate enough to find another facility that we like in Tucson, AZ, but the pricing is still close to $15,000 per round of treatment. This cost does not include the eventual embryo transfer if the round of treatment gets that far.

During our previous round, we were one step away from having the embryo transferred for pregnancy. Unfortunately, and very sadly for us, our only embryo did not make it through the final round of testing.

We don’t really feel very comfortable asking for financial assistance in this matter, but at this point we have exhausted all of our financial reserves. We’ve accumulated a very large amount of debt during this endeavor and we simply do not have the means to continue pursuing this option without your help.

We understand that a request for this amount of money is not trivial, but we would be immensely thankful for any amount that you could contribute to help us fund another round of IVF treatment. Even small amounts will add up if enough people can pitch in to help.

Since we are unable to fund this ourselves and we require your help, we feel it is very important to be clear with how this process works and we want you to know that even with 1 -2 more rounds of treatment, they can not guarantee that this process will be successful for us. Beyond IVF, our other options will be to look at donor eggs or adoption. Both of those options are also very costly. We have no expectations as to whether or not we can raise enough money to continue, but in the event that we do meet or exceed the funding goal, we will be spending all of this funding on the IVF process or donor/adoption cost. Should we exceed our funding goal, everything else would be put towards the existing debt that we’ve already accumulated towards this process.

The IVF process is a bit lengthy, but also kind of quick. They will start by giving Katie some fertility medications. She will have to inject them daily and there will be regular ultrasounds and checkups during the pre-retrieval process. Once they have determined that we’re ready, they will put Katie under anesthesia and then perform a retrieval procedure. At this point, they will let us know how many eggs they were able to retrieve. Once retrieved, the eggs deemed to be mature will go through a fertilization process. At this stage they will know within a day or so if the egg seems to be fertilizing correctly. If it is, they will wait another 5-6 days to ensure it reaches and important stage known as a blastocyst. At this point, there is one last round of testing that ensures that the embryo is normal and will develop properly if transferred. As long as this final stage of testing comes back normal, then we would be ready to move forward with embryo transfer. We just wanted to make sure that you have a clear idea of how the process works so that you know what you would be supporting us with.

If you want to help and you are not comfortable using a digital platform to give, you can reach out to us directly. You will not have any fees if donating on this platform, but I would like to be transparent that they do charge a 4% fee for any transactions online.

If anyone has any questions, or would like to know more about our journey, we would be happy to talk about it and share with you. Please let us know. We know that we are asking a lot and we thank you for your love, support, and time you spent reading this.

Thank you,

Katie & Anthony Prudencio