Planes, trains and fertility clinics. March 2010

Other locales worldwide are also promising for “fertility tourists”. Buenos Aires,Argentina, for example, is the medical-specialty training capital for physicians from countries throughout South America, including for infertility treatments. The highly sophisticated city, dubbed the “Paris of South America”, was where Darla Huaman, a schoolteacher from Waconia, Minnesota, and her husband chose to go when Darla was unable to become pregnant a second time. Thanks to that trip, Darla is now expecting another child in May.

After her 6-year-old daughter Katherine was born (the couple also have an adopted 21-year-old daughter), Darla, then 38, had two miscarriages. “My gynecologist just told us to keep trying. So we did for six years. I wish he’d suggested fertility treatment, but he didn’t”.

Darla, now 44, realized that as time went by, her eggs were aging, too. She went online in the spring of 2009 and spent hours researching fertility clinics around the world. She chose Demián Glujovsky, M.D., who had practiced at the Center for Women’s Reproductive Care at Columbia University in New York City. A reproductive endocrinologist and ob/gyn, he started the first fertility clinic in Argentina 27 years ago: the Centro de Estudios en Ginecología y Reproducción, or Center of Studies in Gynecology and Reproduction.

The Huamans contacted Dr. Glujovsky in June 2009, and by the middle of August the couple were in Argentina. “He always responded efficiently”, says Darla of Dr. Glujovsky. “His English is excellent, and we both speak Spanish. He sent a prescription for the fertility drugs to our doctor here, and he talked to our doctor on the phone. He was very encouraging to us. Plus, he put us in touch with two American couples who had been treated there as references. Our insurance, HealthPartners, covered most of the testing before we left”

The couple used frequent-flyer miles, instead of paying $800 each for round-trip tickets to Buenos Aires, and spent $75 a night for a “lovely” two-bedroom apartment near the clinic. “The clinic was the same quality as an American one, the medical staff all spoke English, our appointments were on time”, says Darla.

For egg-donor IVF, their son-to-be cost $4,600. “My husband is currently in business school, so there is no way we could have afforded the cost in the States. We would have had to give up”, says Darla. “We were at our Minnesota state fair in September when we got the phone call that we were pregnant. I was in the midway bawling my head off, I was so thrilled”.