I would do it. I did both IVF shared risk (33) and FET shared risk (36) for my two kids and "lost" money, but not having the financial stress during the stressful waiting and monitoring after paying upfront was worth it to me. We had no ability to get insurance coverage through our Federal jobs. It also doesn't feel like "losing" money when you have successful outcomes, and any money you "lose" makes the program more viable for other families who are trying.

I’m the PP - just wanted to add that shared risk doesn’t guarantee you’ll get 5 cycles. SGF kicked me out of the shared risk after 3 failed cycles with no PGS normal embryos. At some point they will cut their losses if they think they’re just going to lose more money on you. We got our money back, but I went into it mistakenly thinking I’d have 5 attempts, which wasn’t the case.

I recommend shared risk. I was in the same situation as you - age 38, secondary infertility with no prior issues and my numbers all looked great for my age. I debated doing shared risk and we decided to invest in shared risk knowing that as long as we got a baby at the end of the day we wouldn’t regret spending the money. Well, unfortunately all my eggs turned out to be duds - something you don’t find out until you do IVF. So no success but we did get our money back and put it into donor egg shared risk. We may get our money back from that too as we’ve done 3 FETs with donor eggs and no luck yet. Also, when I started this I never thought I’d do as many cycles as I’ve done but you get desperate and keep throwing money at more attempts. The medication cost for me was like $6-8K per IVF cycle so unless you have insurance you’ll still be spending more than you think. Good luck - hopefully you won’t need to get your money back because it sucks (but it’d suck even worse if you didn’t!).

I’d do shared risk - if anything you don’t have to stress as much about the financial component as much. We were in SGFs shared risk program - it took 4 cycles to conceive our first and an additional 5 cycles to conceive our twins. Good luck!

Most clinics have better numbers through their shared risk programs. A lot of that is obviously because they choose who to qualify, but I can’t help but think that some of it, at least at the margin, is because they have that extra incentive. Even little things like calling first with results or scheduling priorities or providing backup medication if weather messes up the Mail (happened to me) seem just a little bit more likely to work out in your favor if their money is on the line.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My advice is not to do shared risk. By way of background, I actually did shared risk at SGT and got pregnant the first cycle and have no regrets having gone that route in my late 40s. (Due to my age I had donor eggs and SGF requires you to do Shared Risk if you use donor eggs.). Here is why I would advise against shared risk for you. Shared risk gives you up to 6 cycles but a “cycle” is not what you think. A “cycle” is tied to your use of all viable embryos, so, if you get 15 viable eggs, that become 5 viable embryos, and you implant 1 at a time, it is one cycle. It is unlikely that you will go thru more than one cycle between now and the end of 2021. And it would be physically impossible to go thru 6. So, financially, you’re better off doing it one at a time.

This is wrong. Shared risk covers 6 retrievals. Transfers do not count against you. There is a separate shared risk FET option if you already have embryos and are just doing transfers.

That’s PP’s point. Unless OP has several failed retrievals with no transfers, there’s no way she’s going to get through six retrievals by the end of 2021 (which is OP’s self-imposed deadline). A retrieval + frozen FET takes ~3 months. Now, if OP is willing to extend her deadline, then fine.

6? No, but 2-3 ? Possibly depending on how many embryos they get. If the first retrieval goes well, shared risk is less cost effective, if it doesn’t, then it starts to be more likely to save you money. Also PP was making several points one of which was to suggest that “cycles” include FETs, which is not true.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My advice is not to do shared risk. By way of background, I actually did shared risk at SGT and got pregnant the first cycle and have no regrets having gone that route in my late 40s. (Due to my age I had donor eggs and SGF requires you to do Shared Risk if you use donor eggs.). Here is why I would advise against shared risk for you. Shared risk gives you up to 6 cycles but a “cycle” is not what you think. A “cycle” is tied to your use of all viable embryos, so, if you get 15 viable eggs, that become 5 viable embryos, and you implant 1 at a time, it is one cycle. It is unlikely that you will go thru more than one cycle between now and the end of 2021. And it would be physically impossible to go thru 6. So, financially, you’re better off doing it one at a time.

This is wrong. Shared risk covers 6 retrievals. Transfers do not count against you. There is a separate shared risk FET option if you already have embryos and are just doing transfers.

That’s PP’s point. Unless OP has several failed retrievals with no transfers, there’s no way she’s going to get through six retrievals by the end of 2021 (which is OP’s self-imposed deadline). A retrieval + frozen FET takes ~3 months. Now, if OP is willing to extend her deadline, then fine.

Anonymous wrote:My advice is not to do shared risk. By way of background, I actually did shared risk at SGT and got pregnant the first cycle and have no regrets having gone that route in my late 40s. (Due to my age I had donor eggs and SGF requires you to do Shared Risk if you use donor eggs.). Here is why I would advise against shared risk for you. Shared risk gives you up to 6 cycles but a “cycle” is not what you think. A “cycle” is tied to your use of all viable embryos, so, if you get 15 viable eggs, that become 5 viable embryos, and you implant 1 at a time, it is one cycle. It is unlikely that you will go thru more than one cycle between now and the end of 2021. And it would be physically impossible to go thru 6. So, financially, you’re better off doing it one at a time.

This is wrong. Shared risk covers 6 retrievals. Transfers do not count against you. There is a separate shared risk FET option if you already have embryos and are just doing transfers.

Anonymous wrote:My advice is not to do shared risk. By way of background, I actually did shared risk at SGT and got pregnant the first cycle and have no regrets having gone that route in my late 40s. (Due to my age I had donor eggs and SGF requires you to do Shared Risk if you use donor eggs.). Here is why I would advise against shared risk for you. Shared risk gives you up to 6 cycles but a “cycle” is not what you think. A “cycle” is tied to your use of all viable embryos, so, if you get 15 viable eggs, that become 5 viable embryos, and you implant 1 at a time, it is one cycle. It is unlikely that you will go thru more than one cycle between now and the end of 2021. And it would be physically impossible to go thru 6. So, financially, you’re better off doing it one at a time.

It's not necessarily a financial wash if she only has one retrieval through Shared Risk. If she transfers each of the embryos, and they each fail, she can choose to withdraw from the program and will get a full refund. If she buys one cycle outside of the program, and it fails, no money back.

The only way you "lose" money in Shared Risk is if you have 1 retrieval and the 1st or 2nd transfer leads to a child. If you know 100% that you will succeed with 1 retrieval and 1 or 2 transfers then Shared Risk is not a good option. Unfortunately, however, there is no 100% guaranteed outcome, and that's why people choose Shared Risk. If you're comfortable with the gamble, though, then buying a single cycle could be the best option for you.

Anonymous wrote:My advice is not to do shared risk. By way of background, I actually did shared risk at SGT and got pregnant the first cycle and have no regrets having gone that route in my late 40s. (Due to my age I had donor eggs and SGF requires you to do Shared Risk if you use donor eggs.). Here is why I would advise against shared risk for you. Shared risk gives you up to 6 cycles but a “cycle” is not what you think. A “cycle” is tied to your use of all viable embryos, so, if you get 15 viable eggs, that become 5 viable embryos, and you implant 1 at a time, it is one cycle. It is unlikely that you will go thru more than one cycle between now and the end of 2021. And it would be physically impossible to go thru 6. So, financially, you’re better off doing it one at a time.

Is the program at SG time-bound?

Anonymous wrote:My advice is not to do shared risk. By way of background, I actually did shared risk at SGT and got pregnant the first cycle and have no regrets having gone that route in my late 40s. (Due to my age I had donor eggs and SGF requires you to do Shared Risk if you use donor eggs.). Here is why I would advise against shared risk for you. Shared risk gives you up to 6 cycles but a “cycle” is not what you think. A “cycle” is tied to your use of all viable embryos, so, if you get 15 viable eggs, that become 5 viable embryos, and you implant 1 at a time, it is one cycle. It is unlikely that you will go thru more than one cycle between now and the end of 2021. And it would be physically impossible to go thru 6. So, financially, you’re better off doing it one at a time.

At that age you could easily end up with no embryos to freeze.