SAHD turned SAHW and husband seeking donations for IVF

[pomegranate82]

I just wondered what your thoughts are on this. I'd rather not name the couple as they don't have a continuous media presence and I am genuinely sympathetic to the fact that they can't have children naturally. But at the same time the husband has a well paid job as far as I am aware and the wife has been a homemaker for four years despite the fact that the husband is overseas for a large part of the year and there are (obviously) as of yet no children. The amount they are looking for is the kind of amount you could earn relatively quickly if all your income was going towards this goal. I am surprised they are asking other people for this money when surely the wife could go out and earn it. They have a picture of a quiver on the donations page and I'm also wondering if they plan to fund a huge brood in this way (or try to - despite having a pretty enormous extended family there are very few donations so maybe this course of action is frowned on. They are fundie-liteish though - wear pants, dance etc.) Any thoughts?

Edited for riffles

[anjulibai]

I think the wife should get a job.

[ViolaSebastian]

Lazy Lynsie, Part Deux!

[pomegranate82]

How do you think this would be seen in fundie-lite circles? I'm curious as to whether the low number of donations is due to disapproval of IVF or of the fact that they're asking for money. Or maybe they just don't have that many friends and aren't close to the myriad of relatives.

[DGayle]

I'm extremely sympathetic to infertile people. I had to get a bunch of shots to have my kids, so I get it. But that wife needs to get a job. If you can raise a kid on your own, you can work some kind of job. If you can't sit at a desk answering phones, you can't raise a kid.

So no sympathy from me if she isn't willing to work to help earn the money.

[16strong]

So there's a picture of a quiver on their donations page? What is the idea here? Octomom revisited?

I know that infertility can be devastating, but I can't help but wonder if they've got the wrong idea about what ivf is for.

[Four is Enough]

Job. Definitely..

[lilwriter85]

A few months back, I was talking with a college friend who lives out of state. She was telling me about another friend from college. I met that woman a few times years ago at parties, but never became friends with her. My friend was telling me that the woman and her husband set up an online donation fund for IVF and people in their circles have different views on it. The woman and her husband both work and I assume they are covering some of the IVF costs. I think if I personally knew a couple in which both spouses worked, I might donate to their fund. Same with a two income couple raising extra money for an adoption.

I remember the various Lazy Lyndsie threads. I started reading her first blog kind of late. On FJ yuku, some people called out Lyndsie and Daniel since the beginning when they first collected donations to get their home study done. I remember people being pissed that she was buying Daniel expensive gifts and they went on a vacation sometime before the home study was done. Then when Lyndsie was questioned a couple of times about why she didn't work. She once said that once she married Daniel, she no longer desired a career in cosmetology. Another time, she said that the reason she didn't work, was private. I think even if Lyndsie had worked part time, she wouldn't been snarked on too much here.

I looked at some of the adoption blogs that were linked on Lyndsie's first blog. Some of those couples were raising money for adoptions. A year ago, I stumbled onto a blog of a Utah Mormon couple that mentioned receiving financial help from their families in order to cover adoption costs. There was another fundie lite family that someone linked here or on FJ yuku that was adopting special needs kids. The family had several biological children and the father had been in the military.

There is non-fundie couple Rachelle Friedman Chapman and Chris Champman. Rachelle is paralyzed due to an accident before her wedding. She has a bit of online following because of her blog, book, and reddit activity. She does speaking gigs too. Rachelle and her husband are having child via surrogacy and they have been collecting donations for some of costs. They have a 25k goal on gofundme, but close to 15k has been raised. Rachelle and her husband said in an interview that some people disagreed with them having an online fundraiser to cover their surrogacy costs.

[August]

SAHW are lazy asses who can fund their own goddamned reproduction.

I thought the pretend reasoning for quiverful was that god decides* how many babies you have? Are they admitting that's bullshit now?

(since there is no such thing as a god, any reasoning assigned to it is simply a deflection of responsibility for personal choices and judgement of others. God wants me to have all the babies, but you should listen when he tells you you're not getting any)

[Jana814]

I agree the wife needs to get a job!

[VVV]

What is it with people feeling free to beg for money from strangers to cover whatever it is they want but can't afford?

I am sympathetic to people in the midst of a true emergency and I will donate to someone facing catastrophic medical bills, or some other unexpected and horrific event. But in this case there is an able-bodied adult who can and should go out and get a job to pay for an option that an awful lot of people would like to have but can't cover the cost.

[pomegranate82]

The other weird thing is that I think the husband earns good money afaik. I don't understand why they don't have money for this if it's only the first child. They say they have savings that they've put towards the costs but I am a single person on a fraction of the income and could have saved that amount quite quickly. I guess there are possibilities like travelling costs for visiting so much family scattered all over the place but I still don't get why there isn't more in the way of savings. They don't do all the bad stuff us unsaved folks do and have said that they spend a lot of their spare time just reading the bible...

[Mama Mia]

I don't mind people using on-line fundraisers for whatever they want, but I , personally, wouldn't donate to a SAHW who won't get a job to try to pay for it. If they were close friends/family AND she was working, but they were still short - I might pitch in some cash. But definitely not if she's not willing to get a job. I'd also kind of wonder how well she'd cope with motherhood if she wasn't willing to put in the energy to work for something so important to her. Even if she's super fundie, doesn't believe in working outside the home -- there's things she could do from home - childcare, on-line customer support, even some sort of etsy sales. Something.

If there were extenuating circumstances, like the disabled woman with the surrogacy - I'd help with that if I was able. I disagree that if you're too disabled to hold down a job you're too disabled to have a child. That's actually kind of an awful view, IMHO. Parents can do a lot of things to adapt to child care - including getting help from family or friends or a paid provider, if needed, that aren't possible in a work situation.

[warriorblade8857]

How much are they asking for/how much is the cost? Just curious.

[Idolatry]

I don't really get the FJ blind item concept, but whatever.

Most people don't just jump to IVF. Before I even got to IVF, I spent almost $20K on everything but IVF over three years, plus the complications and issues that got me there in the first place. IVF is mind-bogglingly expensive, mine was over 15K for just one round. And it was all due at once when it started. Also, this might not be their first round. This could be round three or something. Very common and heartbreaking.

I don't get why anyone is a SAHW, though. And fundraising for anything while doing nothing is lame, sure. But again, I don't know their circumstances. Visa issues, health issues, who knows?

[SunnyAndrsn]

We are an infertile couple. Did IVF, the whole nine yards. We had a lot of help paying for it through an infertility group called INCIID or we never would have been able to even try. It never in a million years occurred to us to ask for donations to pay for it.

I started a second job in November so we can get a new roof in the Spring. She can get a job to pay for her IVF. I would never consider putting up a donations/Gofundme page for a roof when I'm able bodied.

Tired from working so much, but grateful I have the health to do so, as well as in demand job skills.

[nelliebelle1197]

The quiver logo makes me wonder if they are going for a giant batch of babies at once.

[meee]

A few thoughts:

I, too, have been through IVF. Failed one cycle that I was doing in the middle of an incredibly stressful work environment, which I'm sure didn't help. I'm in the middle of a second cycle now, and I'm loving that I've switched jobs and am now working part-time, and from home, for three times the amount of money (per hour) that I was making at the full-time job, and no change in insurance. And I'm not the only person who has ever switched jobs in part because of fertility treatments - I know quite a few people who just plain cannot handle a full-time out-of-house job on top of early morning monitoring, pharmacy visits, injections, potentially bad side effects including mood swings and irritability and terrible pain, maybe having to travel to a different center to cycle, etc. So I can't judge someone for not wanting to work while undergoing treatments.

That said, I don't know enough about the SAHD/SAHW culture, and if she's never worked, and never saved, and doesn't have insurance (I suppose for that reason alone a job would be a great idea), then, yeah, I think she's going about it the wrong way. Among other reasons, IVF doesn't always work the first time, and then you'd have to start from scratch.

And, she'd better not be going for a quiverfull at once a la Octomom. I'm pretty sure any doctor who would allow that would stand to lose his license. When I asked my doctor about the possibility of twins, even - citing the advice of a friend - the doctor said, "Is he going to take care of the preemies for you?" So, yeah.

[SoybeanQueen]

I don't like that people ask for money for everything these days. It's particularly annoying to be asked for money so that others can have kids, either through IVF or adoption. Believe me, I get the desire to have kids. I understand the agony of infertility. I know that adoption can be expensive. We've done all of that, too. If I had money coming out of my ears, I'd be working on enlarging my own family.

It never occurred to me to ask others to fund our family. I consider it rude. I also didn't ask for money to cover my pregnancy or any other parenting expenses.

It's likely that I will never fully forgive the people who asked me to buy various crap to fund their adoptions during the time my husband and I were struggling to grow our family. It's a few years in the past and I still feel angry at the insensitivity of it.

[nelliebelle1197]

I don't like that people ask for money for everything these days. It's particularly annoying to be asked for money so that others can have kids, either through IVF or adoption. Believe me, I get the desire to have kids. I understand the agony of infertility. I know that adoption can be expensive. We've done all of that, too. If I had money coming out of my ears, I'd be working on enlarging my own family.

It never occurred to me to ask others to fund our family. I consider it rude. I also didn't ask for money to cover my pregnancy or any other parenting expenses.

It's likely that I will never fully forgive the people who asked me to buy various crap to fund their adoptions during the time my husband and I were struggling to grow our family. It's a few years in the past and I still feel angry at the insensitivity of it.

I have to agree. People have taken crowd sourcing from funding arts and business projects that otherwise could not succeed and helping out with emergencies and genuine needs to this crazy level of WANT. I want it, can't afford it, so give me money. One reason I find fundie crowd sourcing for medical needs and wants repulsive is that these are the very people who vote to deny us access to universal healthcare and make single payer in the US a pipedream. My sister in law in Australia's public healthcare paid for IVF. Get a good single payer plan in the US and quit begging.

[browncoatslytherin]

wait, the guy works overseas? is she with him or is she here while he's over wherever? if they're apart, how often was he able to see his wife so they could try? sorry, guess i'm having trouble wrapping my brain around what i think i'm reading, because what i think i'm reading is a wife is living in the states, her husband works overseas and maybe sees her once in a while, and they haven't been able to have children yet because they only get limited times to try. if i'm missing something, please enlighten me.

[Idolatry]

wait, the guy works overseas? is she with him or is she here while he's over wherever? if they're apart, how often was he able to see his wife so they could try? sorry, guess i'm having trouble wrapping my brain around what i think i'm reading, because what i think i'm reading is a wife is living in the states, her husband works overseas and maybe sees her once in a while, and they haven't been able to have children yet because they only get limited times to try. if i'm missing something, please enlighten me.

It wouldn't matter where my sperm source is with my health issues. That's the problem with crowdssourcing your reproductive choices, everyone gets to snark on your business.

That's also the problem with this blind item. We have no idea what we are snarking about.

As a side note, my fundie family was shockingly supportive of IVF. I was blown away. Maybe because the end result is all the babies so the means don't matter so much, sound familiar?

[nelliebelle1197]

It wouldn't matter where my sperm source is with my health issues. That's the problem with crowdssourcing your reproductive choices, everyone gets to snark on your business.

That's also the problem with this blind item. We have no idea what we are snarking about.

As a side note, my fundie family was shockingly supportive of IVF. I was blown away. Maybe because the end result is all the babies so the means don't matter so much, sound familiar?

To the bolded: this 100%. I am not even sure we should be discussing this if we don't know what any of the facts really are. I nearly didn't but then started thinking about how socialized medicine paid for my SIL's first few treatments, and there you go. I don't know if it is really all that cool to post info that is not public and not really fair to either the group here or the subject.

[browncoatslytherin]

To the bolded: this 100%. I am not even sure we should be discussing this if we don't know what any of the facts really are. I nearly didn't but then started thinking about how socialized medicine paid for my SIL's first few treatments, and there you go. I don't know if it is really all that cool to post info that is not public and not really fair to either the group here or the subject.

agreed, because the initial information is confusing (to me, at least) and not really enlightening as to the situation. i noted previously how i read it, but depending on specific circumstances and what may or may not have been revealed in the op, the situation could be completely different from what i'm getting from the op so far, or i could be misinterpreting/misunderstanding the op, or any number of things.

[DGayle]

What is it with people feeling free to beg for money from strangers to cover whatever it is they want but can't afford?

I am sympathetic to people in the midst of a true emergency and I will donate to someone facing catastrophic medical bills, or some other unexpected and horrific event. But in this case there is an able-bodied adult who can and should go out and get a job to pay for an option that an awful lot of people would like to have but can't cover the cost.

When it comes to fertility, it's a right if your'e naturally fertile, and an expensive privilege to try even 1 time if you're not.

When you're fertile and want to have litters of kids, everyone supports the right, even if you have 19 kids and force the older kids to raise the babies for you. Nobody would favor forcing even Jill into having her tubes snipped. Everyone will stand by her right even if we disagree with what she's doing.

When the baby factory doesn't work, then everyone says tough titty for you. Having babies is a privilege, and if you can't afford it, you can't have what you want.

Both groups want the same thing, and it's only supported as a right for 1, and that's the group that gets to choose fertility. If you can't afford to raise a kid, but are fertile, your right to have what you can't afford is supported because everyone should get to have the kids they want, even if other people are forced by law to pay. If you can afford to raise a kid, with the piecemeal costs over many years, but can't afford to do in vitro more 1 time than every few years, you get called out for wanting what you can't afford. Sit and think about the hypocrisy here.

Infertility is a medical condition. People are asking for help getting around a medical condition. I've donated to funds for it as long as the people are both doing what they can to help cover the costs too.