Shortly after I set up my crowdsourcing fundraiser for IVF, I discovered a local fertility clinic was offering an amazing proposition to interested women. They were running a study on a new follicle-stimulating medication that has already been approved in Europe and they needed women who were willing to be guinea pigs and test it for them.

The medication was specifically for women who were going to use it with their IVF procedure, who had never had IVF before, and who were between the ages of 38 and 42. This described me exactly!

The best part was that women who were chosen for the study would get a full round of IVF, including medications, for only $4,000. That is only a quarter of the $16,000 I thought I was going to have to raise. I was ready to volunteer!

The clinic was not the fertility clinic I'd been using up to this point, so I had to schedule a consultation with their doctor after getting pre-qualified over the phone. I went to see him the week after my phone pre-qualification and found him to be very nice and laid back. He also had a lot of experience and seemed to know what he was dong. Even better, he seemed pretty confident any problems I'd had conceiving in the past would be overcome with IVF.

I got my mom to pre-pay the $4,000 to get me on the list for the study with the promise of paying her back with my fundraiser funds. I needed to pay right away and the fundraiser wouldn't be over for another month or so. She was happy to help (thank goodness she's a wonderful mom!), and I got on the list.

The study was supposed to start sometime the next month, though they didn't have an exact date yet for it. All I had to do was sit back and wait for them to call me and tell me to come in to start the initial lab work and I'd soon be getting knocked up.

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