Join Abby Eblen MD, M.D. of the Nashville Fertility Center, Susan Hudson MD, M.D. of the Texas Fertility Center, and Carrie Bedient MD, M.D. of the Fertility Center of Las Vegas as they speak with their guest, Julie Lindholm, Executive Director of the Fertility Foundation of Texas. In this episode, we dive into the world of fertility grants—how to find them, how to apply, and what it takes to increase your chances of receiving funding. Many grant programs require detailed personal and financial information to ensure recipients can complete an IVF cycle, even if the grant doesn’t cover the full cost. We discuss how to write a compelling personal statement, gather the necessary financial documents, and navigate the limitations that often come with these grants. Julie shares insider tips on what grant agencies look for in applicants and how to improve your chances of securing funding. If you’re searching for ways to finance your fertility journey, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you take the next step.
This episode was brought to you from ReceptivaDx and Shady Grove Fertility.
Episode Transcript:
Susan Hudson (00:01)
You’re listening to the Fertility Docs Uncensored podcast, featuring insight on all things fertility from some of the top rated doctors around America. Whether you’re struggling to conceive or just planning for your future family, we’re here to guide you every step of the way.
Susan Hudson MD (00:22)
This podcast is sponsored by ReceptivaDx. ReceptivaDx is a powerful test used to help detect inflammatory conditions on the uterine lining, most commonly associated with endometriosis and may be the cause of failed implantation or recurrent pregnancy loss. Take advantage by learning more about this condition at receptivadx.com and how you can get tested and treated, providing a new pathway to achieving a successful pregnancy. ReceptivaDx, because the journey is worth it.
Susan Hudson MD (00:53)
Hello everyone, this is Dr. Susan Hedson from Texas Fertility Center with another episode of Fertility Docs Uncensored. I am so excited today because not only do we have our normal fantastic co-host Dr. Carrie Bedient from Fertility Center of Las Vegas and Dr. Abby Eblen from Nashville Fertility Center.
Carrie Bedient MD (01:09)
Hello.
Abby Eblen MD (01:13)
Hi everybody.
Susan Hudson MD (01:15)
But we are also joined by Julie Lindholm, who is the executive director of Fertility Foundation of Texas. Hey, Julie.
Julie Lindholm (01:23)
Yes, hi, thanks for having me today.
Susan Hudson MD (01:26)
We are so excited to have you anytime we have guests who are able to talk about financial aspects of fertility care and especially things like grants. I think that’s a wealth of knowledge that’s not an easy thing to discover on the internet. And so we’re going to pick your brain. But before we do that, before we started recording today, you were talking about
a challenge that you accepted when you turned 39.
Abby Eblen MD (01:53)
Ha!
Julie Lindholm (01:57)
Yes. Yeah. I had always wanted to do triathlons and I happened to mention it when we were at this random gathering and this younger gentleman in his twenties looked at me and said, really? Like that? And I was like, that’s my challenge. I need to do this. So I ended up training for my first triathlon. did the sprint distance and had so much fun. I continued with it for a while. As you age, your body kind of breaks down. Mother nature said that no more.
I did it successfully for a few years and it was probably one of the best experiences in my life.
Abby Eblen MD (02:25)
That’s awesome.
Carrie Bedient MD (02:29)
So I have a question. Did you send that 20-year-old young man a photo of you crossing the finish line going nanny nanny boo boo? if you did, none of us would follow through and all of us would pretty much cheer you on.
Julie Lindholm (02:33)
I gotta be honest, I wish I had had his contact because I really wanted to do that.
Susan Hudson MD (02:49)
It’s awesome when you can take an experience like that and really mold into it and be able to dive into that at a time that you weren’t necessarily expecting to do something like that.
Julie Lindholm (02:59)
Yeah, exactly. Cause it was like something I want to do my whole life, but I always thought, well I’m 39 years old. There’s no way I can do that. Yeah. That changed.
Abby Eblen MD (03:08)
I did a similar thing at 40, but not quite, not a triathlon. At 40, I did like three or four half marathons and then like you said, it’s like, okay, I’ve done that. My legs hurt, my foot hurts. I’m probably not gonna do that anymore. But I think it’s really cool. One of the things is we all age that I’ve learned, it’s you’ve got to find new challenges in life, you have these challenges when you’re going through school and training. And now with our patients, unfortunately, the challenge is infertility and I had that same challenge.
Julie Lindholm (03:14)
Yeah.
Abby Eblen MD (03:31)
But eventually you get to the point where your life gets a little more stable and you’re like, well, what’s something new I can try and do? So that’s really cool that you did a triathlon, wow.
Julie Lindholm (03:37)
Yeah.
Carrie Bedient MD (03:41)
Do you like running, the biking or the swimming the best?
Julie Lindholm (03:44)
The swimming was, I thought, going to be the hardest part for me, but my husband is in aquatic, so he was my trainer. And it was difficult at first, and then just one day it just snapped. I was like, I get the rhythm, I get what it is. Ended up being my strongest part of the triathlon.
Abby Eblen MD (04:00)
Was it, did you ever have to swim in the ocean? Because not that I’ve done that before, but I have a good friend who did a bunch of triathlons and she hated the ocean part. Cause she’s like, every time you’d start to take a breath, a wave would come. And she said, it was just awful.
Julie Lindholm (04:13)
It was funny, my first, very first one, the storm came in and it was at this beautiful lake and a storm came in and the surge was the like, two foot waves going over, crashing over. And I thought, I can’t do this. When I was at the end of the shore, I thought, how am I going to do this? I’ve never, trained in waves. And my mom was standing next to me and she was going through her second round of cancer. And I thought, if she can do this, I can do this. She needs to see me do this. So, I get in the water and it’s staged by age and I get in the water and there’s hundreds of people around me. And it was so funny because the majority of people that got pulled out because they couldn’t swim in those waves were men, like bodybuilder type looking men. And the women dominated that swim.
Susan Hudson MD (04:55)
I wonder if it has to do with body fat composition. The difference is that tend to do it better.
Carrie Bedient MD (04:55)
That’s awesome.
Abby Eblen MD (04:58)
Yeah, maybe we float a little bit better.
Julie Lindholm (05:00)
Yeah. They were so scared to get in there. like, no. And they were getting pulled out on the jet skis around me. And I was like, bye.
Abby Eblen MD (05:10)
Wow, that would be intimidating. That’d be really intimidating, I think.
Carrie Bedient MD (05:10)
Yeah.
Susan Hudson MD (05:14)
How long did it take?
Julie Lindholm (05:15)
Yeah, but once I finished it was like I can do this again. And so I did it for a couple more years.
Abby Eblen MD (05:20)
Great.
Susan Hudson MD (05:21)
How long did it take you to train before you did your first? From the time you were like, okay, I’m going to do this till the first time you did a triathlon.
Julie Lindholm (05:29)
That’s a good question. It was actually a New Year’s Eve party that get together that this person said that. And the triathlon that was coming up was in July. And I thought, okay, I got six months. I can do this. And so I enjoyed it so much. The next year I just kept doing summer stuff.
Abby Eblen MD (05:39)
Wow.
You should thank that 20 year old.
Julie Lindholm (05:47)
I know, know. He helped my dreams come true.
Abby Eblen MD (05:51)
That’s right.
Susan Hudson MD (05:55)
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Susan Hudson MD (06:27)
Let’s do a question of the day and then we’ll get to literally the heart of the matter. Okay, so our question is, thank you for your podcast. I’ve learned so much as I’ve gone through IVF. Thank you for listening. I have hypothalamic amenorrhea. She’s 32. We’ve had a successful IVF round with seven normal embryos. The only unexpected result was that we have a sex imbalance with six of one sex and one of another.
We want two kids and ideally one of each sex. The solo embryo is a day six, expanded blastocyst, good quality. Doctor recommends transferring the solo first and if it doesn’t stick, then we reevaluate what to do for family balancing later. We like the plan, just curious, anything to think about to make this transfer as successful as possible. During IVF, lining didn’t get thicker than six millimeters, but perfectly trilaminar.
I would love y’all’s opinions on this because I respectfully disagree with that physician.
Carrie Bedient MD (07:28)
I think you can make a case for doing either. Knowing that there’s been lining problems, that’s always concerning because the question is how hard are you gonna have to fight for it? Now, one line of thinking is saying, well, if you can get it thick enough and it’s trilaminar, then of course, go ahead and see it. Because if it doesn’t work, then you are young enough that if you decide to do another round of IVF, you’ve got a high likelihood of having a good outcome with another several embryos, hopefully at least a couple of which will be whatever the desired sex is. And so you can go on from there. The flip side of that is saying you already know that you don’t have an ideal endometrium, try with the sex that you have more of so that if there’s trial and error that you’re doing, you’ve got the room for trial and error. But the problem with that is that let’s say you do that and you are successful, but then you get get to the solo sex a couple years later and it doesn’t work because roughly 70-ish percent of euploid embryos are gonna stick and that means 30 % aren’t, that’s legit chance that this is not gonna stick, then you’re in a tougher position. And so it kind of…
Susan Hudson MD (08:38)
She is only 32.
Abby Eblen MD (08:41)
Well, that’s true.
Carrie Bedient MD (08:43)
She’s only 32, but think about it. By the time she actually gets pregnant and has a baby and gets her head out from underwater from having a whole other human being that she is fully responsible for, which we don’t give that set of instructions in IVF. Like she could very easily be 35, 36 before she goes back to do this again, because she’s trying to enjoy the kid that she has worked so dang hard to get. And so it’s not that she’s old, it’s just that life happens and it happens pretty much every day. And I just…I worry about that because I’ve seen so many people get burned by that.
Susan Hudson MD (09:13)
Yeah, think maintaining the timeliness, but this is somebody who’s made seven chromosomally normal embryos. I mean, the chances of her fertility crashing down in the next two years, theoretically, is not exceptionally likely. And I mean, a lot of it depends on how much preemptive stuff you want to do. So there’s a lot of testing that we don’t necessarily do until you’ve had a failed transfer, or if maybe you only had one embryo. And so I would encourage you to transfer one of the ones you have multitudes of if it works great, great. If not, then you can do additional testing and it’s not the end of the world that you’ve used, that one of six embryos of a certain gender. And I mean, I do like to be somewhat. I don’t know what’s the right word to be cautious of creating lots of embryos that someone potentially isn’t going to use. I think it’s kind of cavalier to be like, oh, I know you want to do family balancing and we have six in one, but let’s transfer the solo one and then we can just do another IVF cycle later. I don’t know. I mean, I would never I would never question somebody who’s like, I definitely want to transfer this one first.
Abby Eblen MD (10:09)
Yeah, I know.
Susan Hudson MD (10:31)
But if you really don’t care which one is first or second, and you don’t necessarily want to increase your odds of having to do another cycle, I would probably aim for transferring one you have multiples of.
Abby?
Abby Eblen MD (10:47)
I agree with Susan in the sense that it makes me little sad that she might go through another stimulated cycle and create a lot more embryos and not use those embryos. It’s a personal preference for everyone and that’s just my own personal opinion. I think if the goal really is to have one of each, and I can’t believe I’m saying this because I’m usually the first one that says the opposite, but normally when we do IVF, we’re very careful making sure about what we’re going to do and what we’re going to transfer and what the steps are. And we in our office, have people select an embryo a month in advance so everybody knows which embryo we’re gonna transfer. But one of the things, if your doctor would consider it, would be to say, kinda like Carrie said, let’s stimulate your lining, see what happens. If it’s suboptimal, maybe you transfer one of the genders that you have six of, and if it looks optimal, then go ahead and transfer the other gender.
But that would be a game day decision and your doctor may or may not let you do that. You’ve already prepared your lining, your lining’s reasonably okay, but not great, maybe you transfer the one that you have six of and wait on the other one.
Susan Hudson MD (11:50)
Also like to comment on the thickness of your lining. I’m way more excited that you have a beautiful trilaminar lining than necessarily what the actual measurement is. And we’ve talked about this multiple times. We sit there and we get hung up on whether you want a seven millimeter or eight millimeter lining. And we all know the studies say that it really doesn’t matter what that measurement is. And probably that delta of whatever you’re starting at and what it goes to, probably has way more bearing and the fact that you have a trilaminar lining should make most of us feel pretty warm and fuzzy.
Carrie Bedient MD (12:25)
The other thing to tuck in the back of your mind, which is not, it’s not a knock on family balancing in any way, or form, but it is the consideration of whatever the underlying reason is for wanting, one male, one female is sometimes people have an idea in their head of, I will have a daughter that is like this and a son that is like this. And really the only thing that we can guarantee you in IVF is that we will try. Everything else is up to the universe because we don’t control it because heaven knows we have tried. All of us have put in our applications. They have all been patently denied. And so we don’t control anything. And so the other thing to consider is what are your expectations of these children? And is that reasonable? Because ultimately none of us control any of that. And so sometimes it’s a helpful reminder to consider that because for some people it affects them, for others it doesn’t. We have no idea which ones you are, but just remember to consider it.
Susan Hudson MD (13:23)
And I always like to talk to my patients who are thinking about doing PGT for family balancing and understanding that realize that your PGT results are right 98 plus percent of the time, which means about one point something percent of the time that it’s going to be wrong. And the thing that is most likely to be wrong is what is the chromosomes of the sex of the baby. And so we can think we’re transferring a chromosomal normal female or male embryo. And we get that 98 plus percent of the time when we end up with a baby, but there is going to be a margin of error. And so that is something to have in the back of your mind as well.
Carrie Bedient MD (14:06)
Absolutely. Okay, let’s talk about the money.
Susan Hudson MD (14:09)
All right.
Abby Eblen MD (14:09)
Ha
Carrie Bedient MD (14:11)
Oh, I the money. Oh, I got the whatever. I’m not cool. Sorry. Go ahead. I’ll stop now.
Susan Hudson MD (14:18)
Let’s first of all talk a little bit about Fertility Foundation of Texas, on a small scale, and then we’re going to talk a little bit about grants on a big scale.
Julie Lindholm (14:26)
Okay. Well, the Fertility Foundation of Texas was founded back in 2013 from Carol Silverberg. Her husband, as Susan knows, is Kaylen Silverberg. She recognized the need for the patients that were coming in and how expensive it was. And so they started this.
She was co-founder of this foundation. And it’s been a volunteer board run from the beginning, from inception since 2013. And when I interviewed for the executive director role, I said, wow, I’ve been in nonprofit administration for 15 years. I’ve been an executive director for cancer nonprofit for a number of years. And it was so impressive to me that all of these years, they’ve been running it themselves.
That means they’re sustainable, they’re committed. and that really spoke volumes to me as to wanting to work for the foundation. So how the foundation works is we give grants twice a year, up to $10,000. You don’t have to be a couple. It could be single, but you do have to apply twice a year. Typically we award four to five every six months within that cycle of the interviews. Wish we could give more, but we have to do what we have in funding. depends on several different factors. If you’re going to get the entire $10,000 or not most of the time you are. So how it works for us, for our foundation is we have an application that you have to fill out and we have five qualifiers that you have to be able to say that all five qualifiers exist for you.
So one of them is you have to live in one of the 21 counties in central Texas that we serve. You have to make under $150,000 per household. You have to see a board certified reproductive endocrinologist, sorry, and see one of you. And then, so there’s a couple other qualifiers you really need to have. So take a look at that application to know if you, and again, that’s our foundation. All foundations run a little bit differently.
Abby Eblen MD (16:13)
And lives.
Julie Lindholm (16:24)
Um, but we really take a deep dive into who you are and what your story is. So I’m going to touch a little bit on something. If you go to our foundation or you go to a different foundation, most, every one of them ask for your personal story. And this is the most important piece. If you qualify for the application, really get into your personal story. Cause sometimes we get like a paragraph that says, this is who I am. But when we get those one to two pagers that take the time to really go through their process. This is the heartbreaking situation that we’re in that I’ve been through that journey and really get to know who you are. What’s your jobs? We could see on paper what your job is, but what is it about you? What is it about your family? What is it about your dreams that you always have of having a family? We also ask for a lot of documentation and I know a lot of foundations do as well. We want proof of your income. We want proof of your expenses and what do you look like at the end of the month when you pay your bills? What’s your assets? What’s your liabilities? Being good stewards to our donors, it’s really important that we give the money to the people that really can afford to have the rest of the treatments and a baby and all of that. So really take a look at that and what your finances are because we’re going to go pretty deep into that because we want to know. We run a credit check. We want to know that you’re not on the brink of you know, going under, a criminal background check because again, we want to make sure that we’re giving these funds to people that are going to be responsible with them. And a lot of foundations do the same thing that we do. But if we agree to the board that yes, let’s go on with this applicant, then we have you come into the office and just really sit down with us for about 30 minutes and tell us your story because you’re on paper. We don’t really know who you are.
And it’s pretty powerful when they come in because I’ve walked that journey myself, but to just hear them tell the story and know to get that feel of, of who they are is, is pretty powerful. It’s really hard to narrow down, the limited amount of money that we have. it’s, it’s, we don’t ever want anybody to think that, well, something about you or your journey, but we have limited funds, so we have to give out what we can give out.
But I think that’s the most important piece if you go for these fertility grants is just really let us know who you are and why we should give the money to you and how are you gonna finance the rest of it? Because in order for you to come to us and apply for a grant, you have to either have no insurance or have exhausted all of your insurance coverage. And then let’s talk about how are you gonna be funding the rest of, cause $10,000 only goes so far.
Are you doing savings? Is family members coming in? Are you doing a GoFundMe, which is pretty common? Are you doing a loan? Let’s talk about how you’re going to be getting the rest of the money. They don’t have to have treatment in central Texas. They can go wherever they want as long as we can really say that that is the physician, have that communication that they are board certified. So they could go to any…state in the United States if they wanted to, as long as we can, really know they have to fill out a form, physician form, we have to know that, who they are. We won’t pay physician fees, but the majority of the rest of the $10,000 could just, go into the treatment, it can go into the prescriptions, that type of thing.
Abby Eblen MD (19:57)
So Julie, can you talk a little bit more detailed about the financial piece? Because for people that don’t have a financial background, what are the things that you guys specifically need from them and where would they get those things?
Julie Lindholm (20:08)
So proof of the finances, is that what you mean? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So when you do our online application, there is specific things we’re going to ask you for to upload and you cannot get to the next section. You cannot complete the application if you don’t do that. It’s really similar to, I would say, applying for a house loan, a personal loan. We’re going to ask pretty much the same things. We’re going to ask for your last two pay stubs, your last two years of tax returns.
Abby Eblen MD (20:11)
Yes.
Julie Lindholm (20:35)
a lot of similar pieces to getting a loan. We want to know, that you’re being good with your dollars month to month. You’re not gambling in a way or whatever that means. so we want to see proof of your bank accounts, your savings accounts, that type of thing.
Susan Hudson MD (20:53)
It was interesting when you were talking, I know I’ve been on a board a long time ago for a short time, but I really appreciate the the information of what you’re getting of there. There is a maximum income for the household, which makes sense. Okay, but also making sure that those people who are applying for the grant have the resources to be able to finish up what’s being given. As you said, $10,000, that’s a huge chunk of money. But that’s not the cost of an IVF cycle, it’s maybe a cost of an egg freezing cycle, but not kind of the whole shebang. And so understanding that this couple or individual needs to be able to provide the other half per se, in some manner is important.
A lot of times I’ve seen these applications as physicians, we all have to sign them from whether it’s Fertility Foundation of Texas or other grant organizations. What are some things that when they’re writing a personal statement, would you encourage them to include and I appreciate your like, make sure you open up your heart. see a lot of people I know their stories better than they write them down. And I’m just like, my goodness, you needed to include this and this and this. But what are some examples of things to include?
Julie Lindholm (22:10)
Yeah.
I think the big thing is long have you been in this journey? When did this journey start? What have you started? Did you have an IUI? How many years? Why are they recommending IVF? It’s always interesting to know a lot of times what maybe a medical condition is. So just being as detailed as possible as to what your journey looked like from the beginning and maybe who you are. We get these applications, these stories, and it’s just heartbreaking because…We’ve always wanted to have a family and we got married and similar to my journey, got married, bought a house and was like, we’re going to have babies. And then all of sudden you’re told you have to have IVF or more and you have just sunk all your money into your home. Your big down payment, know, 29 years old, big down payment. And then you’re told, sorry, you’re going to have to come up with tens of thousands of dollars if you would like to have this baby.
Having a little bit of a detailed journey of why they’re asking for the money is really important. So even starting from the beginning of what it’s like, I enjoy seeing those like what I was just saying about with myself. We just sunk a bunch of money into buy our home and wow, we’re stuck with tens of thousands of dollars ahead of us and we’re 29 years old, we don’t have that kind of money. And then a little bit about their doctor, the diagnosis and things like that.
Carrie Bedient MD (23:40)
Do you think that patients have to have a, I don’t want to say sob story, because that gives the wrong impression of the pain that people go through as they’re dealing with infertility. But there are some people who have very long and involved stories, and there are some people who have relatively simple stories where they tried for a year, it didn’t work, they did a test, and he doesn’t have sperm, she’s got blocked tubes, and it’s a very cut and dried story as opposed to some of the other folks who have a much more involved road of other diagnoses and treatments and all of that. Like, do you think that some of those simpler stories that are equally as painful, just not quite as involved, like do those people have hopes of getting the financing when they can’t necessarily compete, so to speak, against the dramatic stories?
Julie Lindholm (24:31)
Yes, absolutely because most of the board members have been through their own fertility journey and we’re all completely different. As doctors, when a patient walks in, they’re going to be a different story from the one that just walked out the door. We all have a different story. Mine was very, very long, very, intense. But maybe the board member sitting next to me, was exactly the scenario that you just said.
I think that what I love about this board is we all recognize that a fertility journey is a sob story. I mean, it’s emotional, it’s an emotional burden, not just for, if it’s a couple, it’s not just for the wife or the husband. It’s even for the family members that are going through it with them. And so I think that the great thing about this board is it’s so, so many different experiences with their fertility journeys. So it’s so easy for…least one person in that room to connect with, whoever’s sitting in front of us. So if it’s a simple story, if it’s a long story, doesn’t matter. We all have that ability to actually just really focus on any fertility journey is emotional and it’s hard. And it’s a sob story because it’s not anything that anybody ever predicts is going to happen in their life. So as long as they qualify for what we’re looking for, again, financial is a big piece of it.
Then we will want to sit down and get to know you and see, who you are. So I don’t think it does have to be a complex story because we all understand it.
Susan Hudson MD (25:55)
Awesome, that’s awesome. Now, if somebody is looking outside of the Central Texas area, which there’s a lot of people outside of Central Texas, where do people go looking for grants? Because we have patients ask us that all the time, I want to go looking for grants, where do I start to look? So what would you advise them?
Julie Lindholm (26:18)
I would go to the internet and just start putting, fertility grants and just see what pops up because I’ll tell you, I’ve done this recently because we are in the middle of rebuilding our website. and I thought, you know, let me see what some others are doing, what’s some helpful tips or tricks. And so that’s exactly what I did. And so I was able to get nationwide pop up central Texas, different areas of Texas. So maybe put, what state you live in because a lot of them are just by state. So, be a little bit specific where you’re looking for, but there are a lot of nationwide grants available that if you just put grants for fertility treatments, a lot of those are going to pop up for them.
Abby Eblen MD (27:00)
I think you may have said this earlier too, but can you pair, like if somebody gets a grant in Tennessee and then they have a, there’s some national grant, can they put those together usually?
Julie Lindholm (27:10)
Yeah, for us, yeah, it doesn’t matter. As long as you qualify for our grant, we give you $10,000. If you get another $10,000 from a national grant, it doesn’t matter. When you’ve qualified with us, we’re going to give you. So I encourage people to really look at the national grants outside of what we can give and start applying for those because you could essentially, I mean, let’s think about that. If you got three grants for $30,000, there’s your funds to pay for that. I think what’s hard for a lot of people is it is like applying for a mortgage, most foundations are going to want to know. And so it does take the time and it does take the effort, which is why it’s really hard when we can’t give out grants to everybody because we know the time and effort they put into it. But you have to look at it like the same thing. It’s going to take time. It’s going to take effort.
Susan Hudson MD (27:57)
I’d say that probably the biggest time and effort though is probably on your first application because if you have your personal statement, you have all of your financial forms together, you have your letter from your physician. Once you have all those pieces together, it’s paperwork at that point. It’s not, I mean, I think the hardest thing for anybody is sitting down there and writing the personal statement and sharing that journey because just writing that journey can be painful in itself.
Julie Lindholm (28:08)
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So that’s a good, good way to look at it is that once you get that down, then you’re ready to go and start applying again, just like a job. You, when you apply for jobs, you have to tailor your cover letter and your resume to that specific opening. And so it, could take a little time, but yeah, I think everybody should be just applying for whatever they can get.
Carrie Bedient MD (28:48)
Do you know of other grant categories that people should look at? So we talked about location, where you live, what state you’re in, but then also, I would think religious groups and ethnic groups would be big classes. Are there any other ways that people can help narrow down their search to maybe take advantage of something that is a little more unique to them that you know of that wouldn’t necessarily be obvious to somebody thinking about it?
Julie Lindholm (29:13)
That’s a really good question because there are specific ones out there. Like one off the top of my head is the Jewish Fertility Foundation. So, that’s a very specific one. They just opened up their grants nationwide.
So yes, I would recommend that they specifically look, if you’re Catholic or you’re Jewish or whatever it may be that, you might just even pop in your head that might work for you. Be sure to Google that.
Susan Hudson MD (29:37)
What other pieces of advice would you give to people who are wanting to look at grants? Like how many applications typically come in for a session?
Julie Lindholm (29:44)
Typically, we can get in one six months, we can get up to 20 applications. Again, I think it’s a little daunting or a little intimidating or people are not knowing where to look. And then we might only have the funds to give out five. And a lot of times you have to think that our grant cycles are six months. So where are you going to be at in that? And I will be specific on one that we got in recently. She is a teacher. So she has to do this in the summer.
That’s going to be ideal for her. So they thought ahead of time and we just gave out our grants recently so they can hold onto that until summer when she’s ready to, start the treatments and you have a year once you start pulling the money out to exhaust your, which usually is pretty fast, right? But think about that. I thought that was pretty brilliant on her part that she’s like, I really need to wait till summer.
So let’s look at it now. So our next grant cycle is in July. So she would have had to wait another year. So really look at your, the foundation and the grant cycle and what your particular life cycle is too.
Susan Hudson MD (30:53)
What resources and services does the Fertility Foundation provide?
Julie Lindholm (30:59)
Well, we have a couple of things. We’re redoing our website and we have it on there currently, but we have a resource page. So lots of different areas that you can go for many topics. So definitely take a look at that. I think that will be expanding with our new website coming out. We’ll start a new blog. We, the foundation released a book a few years ago called Fertility and Beyond Join the Conversation and it’s experts in their particular field. But what I like about the book.
And it was written by Heather Tankersley, which is our board president. And we had a couple of board members help on the editing. It’s released on Amazon, so you can find it on there on Kindle or the paper copy. But what I loved about the book when I came onto the foundation and I started reading the book is it’s more of a patient point of view. It is not from like a medical point of view.
So for instance, in the first chapter is counseling therapy. When you’re going through, this particular journey, whether it be you and your spouse, I will say when I went through my fertility journey, the facility that I used, we used, I should say, we had to go to counseling because we had to use an egg donor, the IVF, my eggs just weren’t working. So we had to use an egg donor. And one of their particular specifics was we want you to go to a counselor so that you can talk about before we even start, we want to know that you understand, because it is a totally different world when you think about, you that’s not my blood, but that’s my baby. And so the book is really great because it really dives deep into the whole part of therapy and there’s a section for men. And so it’s more of a patient point of view kind of book.
We are working on the second one and it’s called Fertility and Beyond: Continuing the Conversation. So we’re gonna be looking at some other areas as well from the patient point of view.
Susan Hudson MD (32:44)
Are the grants only applicable to IVF or if somebody needs lesser treatments are grants available for those things like IUIs?
Julie Lindholm (32:54)
It is for IVF, yes. Only.
Susan Hudson MD (32:56)
Okay.
All right. Very good. Very good. Anything else you’d like to share today,
Julie Lindholm (32:59)
Yeah.
Um, I think that’s it. just really encourage people to, if you’re in central Texas, take a look at our foundation. If you’re nationwide, really just start building that reach out to that and really think about there are funds out there to give us why we’re in existence is because we understand the financial burden that this type of journey brings. So really just get out there and look and see that we’re here. We’re ready to help.
Susan Hudson MD (33:27)
I have one more question.
So Julie, if somebody wanted to donate to Fertility Foundation of Texas or other grants, how do we go about doing something like that?
Julie Lindholm (33:37)
That’s a really good question.
So for us, you could go online. You can donate in several different ways. You can donate by debit card, credit card, Apple pay, Google pay, Venmo. I mean, we’ll take it in all forms. We don’t limit it at all. You can send us a check. You we have people that look at foundations as leaving a legacy piece. Maybe that’s leaving us in your will or in your retirement. We have, we’re talking a little bit more about, we get a lot of funding from foundations.
We recently received a very nice check from somebody out of the blue. We don’t know them. Nobody on the board knows them. And what I’m going to assume is that they have a family member or a friend going through fertility. We get those a lot. You know, it’s just like, I can’t help them. So let me help somebody else. And then we, we’ve been in talks of doing different events next year, just really fundraising, but also getting the word out again. Fertility awareness is.
Abby Eblen MD (34:16)
Aww. That’s awesome.
Julie Lindholm (34:32)
week as in April. And I love that it’s once a year, like most things, but people forget, that fertility is real. And it’s a hard topic to talk about, especially if your friend or family is going through that. So it’s putting the awareness out for us as well.
Susan Hudson MD (34:46)
Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us and we love providing information out there to help people be able to finance their fertility care. And to our audience, thank you so much for listening and subscribe to Apple Podcast to have next Tuesday’s episode pop up automatically for you. And be sure to subscribe to YouTube. That really helps us spread reliable information to as many people as possible.
Julie Lindholm (34:48)
Thank you.
Carrie Bedient MD (35:09)
Visit fertilitydocsuncensored.com to submit questions and sign up for our email list.
Abby Eblen MD (35:15)
As always, this podcast is intended for entertainment and not a substitute for medical advice from your own physician. So subscribe, sign up for emails, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Carrie Bedient MD (35:23)
Bye!
Carrie Bedient MD (35:24)
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