When Erica Hopper and her husband decided to use in vitro fertilization to conceive their second child, she wasn’t sure how they were going to pay for it. They’d already had a daughter successfully via intrauterine insemination, or IUI, but weren’t having success during their second attempt with the procedure.

Fortunately, the family was there to help. “My in-laws wrote us a check for $15,000,” says Hopper, 34, who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. The IVF round was successful. Today, she has a second daughter, who is nearly 2 years old. And her in-laws received a return on their $15,000 investment: “They got an awesome granddaughter out of it,” Hopper says.