Infertility Awareness Week: B.C. mom calls for better support for couples struggling to have a child

B.C. mom calls for better infertility support For national Infertility Awareness Week, a look at the high cost of having a child for some.

It’s National Infertility Awareness week, a medical condition that impacts one in six adults in Canada.

However, in British Columbia there are very few resources for those struggling.

In fact, B.C. is one of the only provinces in the country that does not provide financial support to cover the cost of treatments.

That gap in resources has left many people facing the heartbreaking reality that they simply can’t afford to have a child.

Maple Ridge mother Melissa Mancin has longed to be a parent for many years, but that rite of passage has come with a lot of challenges.

Mancin and her husband Ted started trying to conceive back in 2018.

She was 27 years old at the time and had no reason to believe that getting pregnant would be an issue.

“After about a year of trying, nothing was working. So then I decided I would buy ovulation strips and start tracking ovulation more seriously,” said Mancin.

A few months later, she went to her family doctor, who referred her to an obstetrician.

Mancin was given fertility pills to help her ovulate more, but the medication failed to produce results after six months.

“The whole time I was kind of like, ‘Why isn't this working? You know it should be working and it's not,’” she told CTV News.

Mancin’s husband went for fertility tests, which came back clear, but getting an assessment of her reproductive health proved challenging.

She was required to get a hysterosalpingogram before going to the fertility clinic.

The radiological procedure examines the fallopian tubes and contour of the endometrial cavity.

“You call on day one of your cycle. So I kept calling on day one and it took about eight months to get in. So that just shows how many people are trying to also get in for this test,” she explained.

Mancin says she was calling five different hospitals every cycle—only to be told they were full.

“I couldn't even go to a fertility clinic until I'd done that test. So it was kind of frustrating there too, because you're kind of in limbo this whole time trying to get help,” Mancin said.

Eventually, the couple was diagnosed with unexplained infertility by multiple doctors.

They were told in vitro fertilization (IVF) was their only option.

A LONG AND PAINFUL ROAD TO MOTHERHOOD

IVF is a medical procedure that involves retrieving a woman’s eggs and a man’s sperm.

The two are then combined in a laboratory dish.

A fertilized embryo or embryos are then transferred to the woman’s uterus.

It’s a costly procedure that often leaves patients feeling emotionally and physically drained.

“We thought about it for a while and realized that if we wanted to have a baby, that's the way we had to go,” said Mancin.

The couple was on a waitlist for a fertility clinic for six more months.

When they finally got in, Mancin started a very aggressive treatment cycle in order to have the best chance at retrieving the most eggs.

She was on high dose medication—first pills and then injections.

“Some nights you're injecting your stomach three times. The medication burns when it goes in. It's just not fun,” said Mancin, through tears.

She described it as the most difficult thing she’s ever done physically.

“As your cycle progresses, your ovaries, the follicles grow. So the follicles are fluid-filled sacs containing eggs. So towards the end, when we were almost ready for retrieval, you could literally feel your ovaries—like they felt heavy,” said Mancin.

She said it felt very uncomfortable and she had a hard time sleeping.

The process of removing the eggs was also painful, despite sedatives.

“We had 24 eggs that got retrieved and anytime you have over 20, you're at risk for something called OHS,” said Mancin.

Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome is an exaggerated response to excess hormones.

“They drain the follicles that fill back up with fluid. So you get a really, really heavy feeling in your stomach. It's hard to breathe, because there's so much pressure in there,” explained Mancin.

In the end, since she was drained emotionally, mentally and physically, she and her husband decided to take a break so she could recover.

“If our IVF round was not successful, I would not have done it again. When we were in it, I knew I couldn't give up because we'd spent all this money, but I would never do it again,” said Mancin.

It took months for the swelling to go down and for her to feel like herself again after all the hormones.

“Emotionally, it's just you're just constantly left behind. Everyone else is moving forward in life, it seems you're just still stuck in the same cycle,” she described.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS GIFT EVER

The couple did their first round of IVF in December of 2021 and managed to get six frozen embryos.

Their first transfer was successful and their son Jack was born just before Christmas 2022.

From the time they started trying to naturally conceive to the time he was born, the couple says some of their friends had two or three babies.

“I'm very grateful. We had a good outcome, but it was just too much for me, financially and physically, it was a lot,” said an emotional Mancin.

Motherhood is not something she takes for granted.

“There's hard nights when you're a new mom, but I've wanted it for so long that it doesn't really bother me. So, yeah, this guy is just the best thing I've ever done,” she said, smiling at the four month old in her arms.

THE COST OF BECOMING A PARENT

The entire process cost the Mancins about $25,000.

They were reimbursed about $10,000 through their extended benefits plans for medication but the rest was out of pocket.

However, not all British Columbians have that kind of coverage.

On top of those expenses, there are storage fees for frozen embryos and every transfer attempt costs at least $10,000.

Those going through the process often spend years saving and, in the end, there’s no guarantee it will work.

“The hard part about IVF is—the older you get, the less likely it's going to work. So when you spend the years saving up for it, you're diminishing your chances of actually having a successful IVF cycle and transfer,” said Mancin.

She’d like to see the provincial government pay for one cycle, similar to the Ontario government’s program.

Seven provinces provide various, unequal forms of financial help for people needing treatment for infertility.

British Columbia is not one of them.

The lack of resources in the province has Mancin questioning whether she can afford to have another child, with such a great cost to both her finances and mental health.

“I want another one. It's hard because we don't just get to make babies like everyone else,” said Mancin.

THE STIGMA

Infertility rates are rising, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, few people experiencing it are public with their struggles.

“I think it brings a lot of shame. You know, the one thing you're supposed to be able to do as a woman you can't do, and in our case we don't know why,” said Mancin.

That’s why the new mother has decided to share her journey on social media.

“I had so many people in my (direct messages) just saying, ‘Hey, me too. I've been there too,’” Mancin said.

She says there is power in community and she is grateful for all the support.

But as she did her own research, she discovered infertility tends to be a polarizing issue.

Mancin found the comments in news articles online to be particularly troubling.

“The amount of people saying, ‘Maybe there's a reason why you can't get pregnant, you don't deserve to be a mother,’ or ‘There's enough people in the world already, just adopt,’” she recounted.

She says adoption is still on the table, but it was important to her and her husband to explore other options first.

“’I'm not paying for your science experiment,’ was one of the comments. So that's rough because we wouldn't be here unless we had to,” said Mancin.

This is part one of a four-part series. Check back for more this week.