Why I Paid $25K to Become a Parent

Allison_Hope

Click here to read the full article.

When the sound of my biological clock started ticking at an ear-splitting volume and I could no longer ignore it, I convinced my wife we should try to have a child of our own. We ruled out traditional adoption because our research revealed that it could take years and cost tens of thousands of dollars in related costs. I also learned that the foster-to-adopt strategy is not a reliable mentality. It’s encouraged that a foster child should go back to their family and your role is to temporarily assist, not place any unfair assumptions that you might one day be able to call them a part of your own family. So, we decided to try to get pregnant.

I knew from the start that raising a kid is more expensive than a mid-life crisis luxury sports vehicle with all the trimmings. The cost of childcare, clothing, housing, and food, not to mention school supplies, sports equipment, and toys and books, amounts to well beyond six figures for the average American family. What we don’t often talk about, though, and what we don’t usually plan for when we start thinking about having a baby is how much we might spend to become a parent in the first place.

Before we ever have the pleasure of holding our little one in our arms for the first time, more parents like us are spending thousands of dollars to get pregnant and give birth. I didn’t even realize how much we had incrementally spent until I added everything up later and it amounted to more than $25,000. I had to do the math several times because I didn’t believe the total could possibly be that high. The math didn’t lie.

I knew that there might cost involved with trying to conceive, particularly as a same-sex family. We clearly didn’t have all of the ingredients needed at home to make a baby. We explored the idea of using a known donor, as in asking a male who we knew to donate sperm, but decided it was too risky legally in the short-term and the stakes were too potentially too high emotionally in the long-term. Turning to an anonymous donor from a sperm bank meant an exponential increase in cost. One vial of sperm, which is good for one insemination, or one cycle per month, costs around $1,000.

Lesbian moms illustration
Lesbian moms illustration

I also knew that because only one of us might be biologically related to our child that we would need to go through the second-parent adoption process, a cumbersome legal rigamarole that could take months or longer, and that would cost us an untold sum. But I hadn’t planned for all of the costs that we would encounter along the journey to becoming parents.

My wife was older, so my womb was the default choice. We first thought we might consider at-home insemination, but my cycle was too hard to track, so we turned to the help of a fertility clinic. Very thankfully, the office visits were covered by my very good health insurance through work, so we paid just a copay. The cost could have easily skyrocketed just from the office visits, as I sometimes went there as frequently as three or four times a week to track my cycle and the development of my eggs. Still, I was on fertility drugs, some of which weren’t covered by insurance.

It took longer than I anticipated and more orders from the sperm bank than we had hoped to conceive. I spun some naïve guesswork that we’d be pregnant after one or two tries, especially with a doctor regulating my cycle with fertility drugs. In reality, I got pregnant in the average amount of time it takes a couple actively seeking to conceive — six months. Really, the numbers say it can take up to a year.

We invested a cool $10K for fertility treatments and sperm to conceive. We also spent a couple of thousand on acupuncture, which people swear by as a conception tool.

We then spent another $5K on birth and hospital bills, $1,500 on a doula, which felt like the right decision to ensure we had an advocate who could help us navigate medical decisions, particularly any bedside nuances as a same-sex family, and to prevent an overmedicalized birth. I didn’t want to be persuaded to be induced, to take medication I didn’t need or have a c-section if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

The running total doesn’t count the same expenses every other family incurs when they have a newborn, but we weren’t done there. We spent another $6K on second-parent adoption costs, to ensure my wife, as the non-gestational parents, had the same legal rights to our child. The process included legal fees for a lawyer to file the paperwork and navigate the complex legal landscape and red tape that is New York family court, a background check for us both, and a fee that went to a social worker who was required to come into our home and conduct an invasive home study to determine us fit parents for the child we were already raising. I was incredibly lucky again, though, with a job that reimbursed for the adoption expenses.

Of course, I could never put a price on my child, who is the most precious, priceless gift in my life. And I know that there are many people who have spent tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars more because of outdated or discriminatory laws, or because they need reproductive assistance. But I also know that there are so many more who cannot afford to create the families they so desperately want or protect the families they already have. That shouldn’t be the price they have to pay for love.

More from SheKnows

Best of SheKnows

Sign up for SheKnows' Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.