“It really has impacted my life so much that my employer offers this.”

Everything changed when Angela's employer began offering Progyny coverage

When Angela and her husband were ready to start trying to conceive, Angela removed her IUD and waited for her menstrual cycle to come. When it didn’t, she began the lengthy process of finding out why.

Angela was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), which is a hormonal disorder that can cause menstrual irregularity, excess hair growth, acne, obesity, and infertility.

When someone is diagnosed with PCOS and struggling with infertility, a common treatment is ovulation induction and timed intercourse, whereby medications are used to induce ovulation and intercourse occurs at the optimum time for fertilization. When that treatment proved unsuccessful, they decided to move onto intrauterine insemination or IUI, which includes placing sperm into the woman’s uterus to increase chances of fertilization. They did not have success with IUI either and it was recommended they consider in vitro fertilization or IVF.

“We moved onto 2 IUIs after 5 rounds of timed intercourse and medicated cycles.”

— Angela

IVF includes injectable medications to stimulate the ovaries to mature many follicles, an egg retrieval to retrieve multiple eggs, and then fertilization in a lab, followed by an embryo transfer. For those facing infertility, IVF is likely to provide the best chance of a successful pregnancy, but it’s also considerably more expensive. The couple wasn’t sure they could afford such treatment until they learned they were receiving Progyny fertility coverage through her employer.

“I found out that we were going to get Progyny, and at that point everything just changed.”

— Angela

The Progyny benefit would provide them with the coverage they needed for an IVF cycle, including important technology like preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). PGT-A is an embryo selection tool that significantly reduces the likelihood of miscarriage and increases embryo transfer success rate, and ICSI is a fertilization technique whereby a sperm is injected directly into an egg – increasing fertilization rates.

Angela did not take this coverage for granted, “I literally found the person at the company who brought the benefit to us and I sent her a pretty heart felt message to her letting her know how much she impacted our life.”

Angela’s employer, Expedia, played a crucial role in helping them reach their family building goal as the couple welcomed their baby boy into the world.

“It really has impacted my life so much that Expedia offers this.”

— Angela