Why is it so ?#%* Difficult to Get Money Into India?

I have now attempted to make our down payment using my credit card and twice so far it has not gone through and I have not received any sort of notification from the card company.  After the second attempt I call the credit card company.  Luckily I got someone who was smart enough to transfer me to the fraud department.  I think that was part of the issue with Mark's attempts is that he only talked to the regular customer service people and not the fraud department.

I find out from the fraud department why I hadn't even received notification.  Because this payment looked so suspect to them, they just automatically assumed it wasn't a "real" payment.  I explained that it was real and that we would like one of the payments to got through. 

I waited and noticed that the payment did not seem to be showing up on my card activity statement.  I called the card company again.  The fraud department then explained that once a payment has been declined it cannot be re-authorized.  I then "pre-authorized" a payment for $1,000 to the India clinic and was told to make the payment yet again.

Here's Hoping............

It is Really Difficult Getting Money Into India

Mark has tried three times to make our down payment and so far none of the attempts have worked.  The payments are not even showing up on his card, and he has not gotten any sort of denial notifications from the company.  He has tried calling the card company and they told him that it should go through......but they don't.

I suggest trying my card as I have used it in Canada and Mexico without problem.  We have officially given up on Mark's card and are trying mine.

Acupuncture Consult

 

 

In an effort to try and do everything possible that I can to boost my fertility and try to have a as good of quality and as many eggs that I can for our upcoming IVF cycle in India I decide to check out acupuncture.  I have never had acupuncture, but know a couple people who have, people who have had friends who have, and read several anecdotes of those who have on the fertility boards in relations to fertility treatments.  Maybe you only hear about the good stories, but all have heard about are those who have gone on to have success after having acupuncture.

 

I choose a practitioner based on location, their being certified, and their focus on infertility treatment.  It seems like every chiropractor now also does acupuncture and is not necessarily certified or trained for it.  Having treatments done by someone who isn't necessarily trained for it is like going to a podiatrist to have a tooth pulled.  Plus, treatment for infertility is a different focus than for other ailments - for the greatest chance of success go to someone who's done it before.

 

I sat down with the practitioner and we talked about my health history and why I was seeking treatment.  I thought that she was very thorough which I liked. She also struck me as genuinely personable which I also liked.  She also did a "test" needle for me so that I could get a feel for what the treatment would be like.  I was sold.  I scheduled weekly treatments until we leave for India.

 

 



It is Difficult Getting Money Into India

Now that we have selected the clinic, we need to send a $1,000 down payment to start the process.  This essentially will cover the surrogate selection process and the legal costs for the surrogate contract.  The clinic in India has an online payment site that accepts credit card payments.  They do charge a 2% fee per transaction to cover their credit card fees so we decide to look into doing a wire transfer.

I used to work for a bank, doing a wire transfer is pretty easy.  You just need to make sure that you have the correct wiring instructions for the receiving parties bank.  Well, as we are finding out about a lot of things, when working with a foreign country - especially India - things are never as simple as they should be.

First, the wire transfer fees are significantly higher for a foreign vs. domestic wire transfer.  It will cost us $45 per wire transfer and we are looking at approximately 7-8 throughout this process.  Second, you can run into issues with currency translation rates.  Because there is usually a 1-2 delay from when the funds are sent and when they are received and the translation rates can fluctuate daily, you often run into issues with either over-paying or short-paying in the local currency.  Luckily the clinic accepts payments in USD so we will not have the translation issue.  Third, and really most importantly, the Indian Government gets involved in all transfers to and from the country.  The India Government reviews all payments and only allows them to go though when and if they deem the payments to be acceptable.  For these reasons the credit card payment is looking more and more attractive.

Mark goes ahead and makes the payment on his card and we send the clinic the acceptance number.

Picking A Winner

We have been researching and corresponding with clinics for about a week now.  We had narrowed our choices down to five clinics - two in Mumbai, one in Anand, and two in New Delhi.  After more researching and finding some not so positive reviews on two of the clinics we were down to three.  We then find out that the top 3 clinics in Mumbai were being investigated due to visa fraud (allowing procedures to be done with people visiting on a tourist vs. a medical visa)....and then there were two.

We were now down to the clinic in Anand and one in New Delhi.  The clinic in Anand had been featured on a popular daytime TV show in the US and was featured in a few notable news articles.  This clinic was about $10K more expensive than the New Delhi clinic and was really the only thing in Anand which is not a major metropolitan area.  Going into our clinic research we had assumed that this would be our top choice due to the fact that is was probably the best known clinic.

The clinic in New Delhi was not featured in as many articles, but was close to if not evenly rated with the clinic in Anand.  I was able to find a few recommendations for this clinic based not only on their surrogacy success but also on their abilities as an IVF clinic.  This piqued my interest.  Unlike a lot of couples that were looking to pursue surrogacy in India, we are looking to use my eggs (instead of donor eggs).  This makes the clinic's IVF success equally if not more important to us.  This, the cost difference and the fact that we would have more to do and see in New Delhi the choice for us started to become clear.......we were going to New Delhi come September.

Born on the 4th of July

We are lucky enough to have some great friends who invited us to celebrate the 4th of July weekend with them at their lake cabin in Crosslake.  We went out on the boat, watched fireworks, did some fireworks, and had an all-around great time.

One of the funniest parts of the weekend was taking the dogs for a swim.  Penny is a natural - she jumps right in and starts paddling around.  She spends most of the weekend stalking the ducks that keep landing on the neighbor's dock and taunting her.  Archer doesn't quite seem to get it.  He keeps paddling his front legs only and his butt just sinks.  At one point he found a sandbar.  He is tall enough that he was standing on his back legs and "paddling" the air with his front paws.

Our friends had lots of questions for us about India and how our selecting a clinic was going.  They just want to see us have our own baby so badly.   They also brought up an interesting point - next Fourth of July our family might be a little bigger.

The Trouble With Our Clinic

 

Even though we are looking undergoing IVF in India in order to increase our chances with more embryos available to transfer, there is a lot of tests and pre-work that we need to complete here before our trip.  This means that we will need to get our clinic here looped in to coordinate these tests with us before our trip.  We also find that if I was to start the stim meds here than we could shave 5 days off of the trip.  Five days could be a lot.

The difficulty in starting stim meds here is that a clinic here would have to be willing to prescribe the medication - unfortunately the medications cannot be shipped over from India.  Also, the medications cannot be obtained without a doctor's prescription so we will need to have a clinic on board.

We called our clinic to let them know about our plans about going to India, that we would like their help with tests and pre-work for the cycle, and that we would like to start the stim meds here.  We have gotten information from the clinics regarding the drug protocols they would use and they are similar to (if not the exact same) that we did with our clinic the last time.

Unfortunately we cannot get in to see our doctor until next month - not uncommon for our clinic unfortunately.  That is part of the gig when working with one of the top clinics in the Twin Cities.  Our nurse is able to weigh in on the situation in the mean time though.  They have only done "monitoring" for another clinic occasionally and an international clinic only a couple of times, and it was minimal at best.  She is pretty certain that our doctor will not feel comfortable being the prescribing doctor for us.

We are admittedly surprised by this answer.  The anticipated protocol is exactly (or very close to) the same as the one that we did last time with the clinic.  Our doctor said that if we were to do another cycle (which they were recommending to try to get better egg quality) that the protocol would not change.  Were they worried about me getting OHSS - I was borderline with the last cycle?  If that was the case than wouldn't they propose changing my next cycle since wouldn't the exact same protocol mean a possibility of OHSS here?

No, we think that the answer may not actually be related to a health issue for me.  As IVF is a numbers game, we think the answer itself lies in the numbers.  If we start a cycle with the clinic and finish it elsewhere, it shows up us a cancelled cycle in the stats.  In the end, we suspect that it is really about the stats.