Written by Shlomit Ovadia of JCC Denver
Jewish Fertility Foundation (JFF) is a partner of JCC Denver and provides financial assistance, emotional support, community and educational programming to Jewish families struggling to grow their families. According to the CDC, 17% of Jewish women use fertility services. And, with the average cost of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment hovering around $20,000 without the guarantee of a baby, JFF serves as a vital resource to our community members.
When Anna (whose name has been changed for privacy reasons) and her husband met during the pandemic and decided to get married and try for a baby, they began running into infertility challenges. After undergoing extensive testing, Anna realized she would need to do IVF a complex series of pregnancy procedures, which neither her nor her husband’s insurances covered beyond basic diagnostics.
“I didn’t want to change jobs just to get coverage because I feel very established in my career,” she says of working as a legal aid lawyer to represent low-income folks in domestic violence situations.
As the couple began their research, the two came across JFF’s Denver branch that opened in early 2023 and learned about the organization’s financial assistance and support group opportunities.
“I found it really wonderful and helpful,” Anna explains of initially joining JFF’s online meetups during the pandemic, which eventually opened to in-person sessions held at JCC Denver.
Anna and her husband applied for a JFF grant and received $5,000 to help defray the costs of her IVF treatments, which included three egg retrievals and genetic testing—none of which proved to be viable eggs—and even trying to use donor eggs, all of which cost upwards of $120,000. “We are grateful for the grant, everything helps,” she says.
Anna began consistently attending in-person JFF support group meetups held monthly at JCC Denver from August 2023 through February 2024: “I would recommend those to anyone who is experiencing infertility,” she says.
The support groups are run by a licensed clinical counselor or therapist and attended by women at different stages of their infertility journeys; some have had miscarriages, while others are unable to get pregnant.
“Everyone is experiencing loss in a different way than you envision. A lot of the people in the support group had not told anyone or haven’t wanted to, so it really felt like a place where everyone could talk about what they were going through,” Anna tells me.
Through the in-person meetups, Anna and five other regulars who live around Denver found friendship, and continued to meet up outside of the groups, even attending JCC Drag Queen Bingo this past spring together. “I wish none of us were going through this and my journey looked different. But if you are, it’s wonderful to be connected with people going through the same thing. We became friends because of that connection.”
“JFF was a light for me in a process…that is isolating and lonely,” reflects Anna, who is now pregnant with her daughter and due later this fall and says her Fertility Veteran at JFF still check in on her to see how the pregnancy is going.
“JFF helped me reconnect with my Jewish heritage so now I have the tools to think about what it means to raise a child Jewish and what I’ll want to bring into her life.”
“If you want a family, you’ll have one,” one JFF Fertility Veteran tells me. As volunteers, these veterans are matched with people experiencing infertility and serve as emotional doulas according to a person’s individual needs. “A family looks like a lot of different things these days, and you’ll get there with perseverance. There’s a lot of ways to get there.”
To become a Fertility Veteran, please click here.
To join the Pathways to Parenthood Program that begins on September 5, please click here.
Jewish Family Foundation is a JCC Denver Resource Guide Partner. To join our Resource Guide, please email us: info@jccdenver.org.