First things First... Find a doctor

The current infertility doctor we were seeing, Dr. Chin, no longer preformed IVF procedures so we knew that we needed to find another one. Luckily this decision was basically made for us. We discovered that there were a couple of different programs to pay for IVF: 1. You can pay the doctor per procedure or 2. you can apply for a program called Attain, formally known as IntegraMed. Attain is a shared risk program that provides multiple tries if needed. It works like this: you pay one discounted fee, this fee is about the cost of 2 cycles (tries) for most fertility centers. This fee will cover up to 3 fresh cycles and 3 frozen cycles (tries) for a successful outcome. A successful outcome is defined as bringing a baby home, not just a positive pregnancy test. The biggest selling point of this program is the refund policy. If you are unsuccessful after all cycles are exhausted or if you decide to drop out of the program you are guaranteed 70% of your money back. The risk part is getting pregnant on your first cycle. If you are successful on your first cycle then you have paid a lot more than you would have if you just paid the doctor out right. If you need multiple cycles then you end up saving money, but if you are never successful you are only out 30% of your original fee which would barely cover 1 cycle otherwise. You receive no discount or refund from the doctor regardless of outcome or number of cycles. Studies show that most couples require multiple tries and 3 out of 4 couples that use the Attain program bring a baby home. After discussing these options with Mom and Dad Beaumont we all decided that the 70% guaranteed refund was enough to sway our vote in that direction. Plus, it is a much less stressful process knowing that you can try again if needed. So back to finding a doctor, the Attain program requires that you only use doctors in their network. These doctors are the ones with the best success rates across the country. They listed only 1 center in Cincinnati: The Center for Reproductive Health, part of UC Physicians located downtown in the Christ hospital district and in West Chester. Like I said, that decision was easy. Dr. Williams worked mainly out of the West Chester office which was closer to us, so Dr. Williams it was.

Our first meeting with Dr. Williams and Dr. Wu was on March 12th. They were very impressed with how organized we were with all our previous fertility records and how much we already understood about the process. Turns out that we got to skip a lot of the preliminary tests and procedures because all of them were very updated due to everything we had been doing for the last 2 years. This saved us at least 2 months. Dr. Williams told us that the next couple steps were to apply to the Attain program and schedule our Education Day. We were approved to the Attain program right away but the earliest appointment we could get for Ed Day was April 8th.