Case study: It can be a bottomless pit … there is no guarantee

Published on Monday 6 September 2010 16:09

Caroline Wright and her husband, Stuart, spent £9,000 on IVF treatment before they had their twins daughters, Lisa and Emma, now aged four.

The couple paid for three attempts to conceive in the private sector.

After being on the waiting list for NHS treatment, they eventually had the twins at their second NHS attempt in 2005.

Ms Wright, who lives in Forest Mill, near Alloa, said she understood the lengths to which people would go in order to complete their families.

The 40-year-old said their IVF attempts in the private sector were cheaper than elsewhere because she had treatment at an NHS hospital. She said the costs were much higher elsewhere.

"I know that some private clinics can charge in excess of 4,000 or 5,000 a time by the time you add in all the drugs," Ms Wright said.

"The NHS hospitals give them for what they pay for them, so we were quite lucky."

Ms Wright said that if the family had had more funding available, they may have spent more on private treatment had they not been successful on the NHS.

"We moved house not that long after starting IVF, but that is the type of thing you may have thought 'we won't bother doing that' and holidays also," said Ms Wright.

She said women's desire to have a baby was part of a natural instinct to have a family.

"That is why people would spend that much money to have treatment, because it is your life you are changing," she added.

"If you could be guaranteed to get a result at the end of the treatment, people would probably spend more than they are already.

"But it can be a bottomless pit because you don't know how lucky you will be and luck is what it comes down to - there is no guarantee."