[richmond_girl]

So, I was on a mission to get one thing done today, which is make a decision on whether to do the Shared Risk Plan for our IVF. The cost is $22K which includes 4 fresh cycles, unlimited FETs resulting from those 4 fresh cycles, and a 100% refund if we don't take home a live baby. If we don't do shared risk, the cost of each individual IVF cycle is about $12K.

There are a lot of factors to consider when doing Shared Risk - the probability of getting pregnant each cycle, our insurance coverage (which will not pay for Shared Risk but will give us a one-time credit of $5K for standard cost IVF), how much money we can apply from our Flexible Spending Accounts and the resultant tax benefits, etc, etc. Bottom line, I have been sitting in my kitchen for 2 hours doing a scenario analysis in Excel of how much it would cost us to do Shared Risk vs not Shared Risk in any particular situation. It's so complicated that DH and I ended up in a heated debated over binomial distributions, independent probabilities and expected values before finally coming up with our mathematically supported decision.

So, this is what our baby-making has come down to!! Money, doctors, and ultimately - statistics!! Who would have thunk. I guess grad school came in handy after all.

Just had to vent. Thanks for listening!!

[Christine-MA]

Totally not funny, but I'll admit I did laugh I have an MBA in accounting, and DH has a masters in statistics, so it's totally something we would do too!

[Celry]

OMG You two sound like my husband and me. We use excel all the time to help make decisions. It's sad that it's come to that to get pregnant, but still sort of funny.

[snsgirl336]

Wow! If that were my DH and I, I'd be forcing the spreadsheets in his face and he'd be running from me screaming! LOL. In the long run it really won't matter how you got to the decision, just that you got there! I think it's cool that you're using science and math to work in your favor for a baby

[~*Jackie*~]

I can completely understand... you are not alone! And you are in good company!

[SavaAngel]

Well glad you were finally able to come up with a decision.

[richmond_girl]

Oh good, I'm glad we're not the only ones who would do this!! Thanks for the reassurance ladies

[TTCagain]

I think that is a totally normal and good thing to do! An informed decision is the best decision!