More Couples Turn to Crowd Funding to Raise Money for Infertility Treatments

For many couples, having a baby involves a lot more than just the birds and the bees. It involves many rounds of various assisted reproductive treatments (ART), including IVF treatments and infertility procedures such as artificial insemination.

In fact, infertility is probably a lot more common than you may think, and can affect men and women of all ages. For example, 12% of married women, or one in eight couples, have difficulty getting pregnant or sustaining a full term pregnancy. Furthermore, 6.7 million women ages 15 to 44 suffer from impaired fecundity, or the ability to get pregnant and conceive a baby to term. Surprisingly, even healthy, young couples between the ages of 29 and 33 with normal functioning reproductive systems only have a small 20-25% chance of conceiving in any given month.

While IVF success rates are higher than ever before, so are IVF costs
More often than not, insurance policies simply don't cover all or even a portion of IVF prices and other fertility treatments. This leaves single women and couples faced with the task of coming up with $30,000 or more for treatment. With so many single women and couples putting off having children longer than ever, demand for IVF treatments is growing and has reached a record number.

The solution? Crowd funding of course
Now, many couples are turning to crowd funding sites such as gofundme.com and more in order to reach out to the public in hopes they will open their hearts -- and their checkbooks -- to their financial plight in seeking IVF treatments. While some couples are successful in raising enough crowd funds to pay for a small portion of their IVF treatments, others are able to raise enough to pay for the entire IVF price.

According to GoFundMe, there was a significant jump in the amount of donations to people seeking financial assistance with IVF between 2011 and 2014, with nearly $1.5 million being donated during that time.