As a same-sex female couple, Samantha and Jessica knew that they would need some help growing their family. When they found the standard treatment wasn’t working, they were able to access a life changing treatment, in vitro fertilization (IVF), with the help of their Progyny fertility coverage from their employer.
“We always had the conversation, ‘we can’t afford IVF.’ We had no coverage at all, so we started out with IUI, because it was the cheapest of the options that were available to us.”
— Jessica Pace
After ten failed rounds of intrauterine insemination (IUI), the Paces felt like they were out of options, and Samantha felt like she was failing.
“I felt like my body failed me. It was just really dark, it was really hard.”
— Samantha Pace
But everything changed when their employer announced that they were adding the Progyny fertility and family building benefit to their employees during open enrollment.
“Man, life changing. Progyny is amazing. This is where your life can change, your childbearing, family creating dreams can come true. It starts with them.”
— Jessica Pace
The couple could now afford to utilize IVF, which comes with significantly higher success rates than IUI. Their coverage also included fertility medications via Progyny Rx, which is a piece to the benefit that Jessica found particularly supportive. “Progyny Rx has been very awesome. They were always on top of it, sometimes they’d even call us to ask us if we needed a refill. It was always a great experience with them.”
To Samantha, the Smart Cycle plan design offered the opportunity to access the best technology to improve their chances of success, “We chose to get our embryos PGT tested because we had failed IUI’s back-to-back-to-back. 12 made it to testing… we had 6 that were normal, so 50%. I’m so glad that we chose to do it, and that it was covered by Progyny.”
The Paces found success by leveraging IVF with their Progyny benefit and are very grateful to their employer for offering such life changing coverage.
“It just makes me feel proud to work for them, seriously. This Progyny benefit, they hit the ball out of the park with this one.”
— Jessica Pace