Adam Prudhomme
Editor
In summer of 2021, Valerie Watts-Dafoe and her husband Josh welcomed their first born, Cecilia, to the world.
From the outside the birth would seem like the classic tale of a young couple starting a family. In reality, it was anything but simple. Few were aware their struggles to conceive which lead to a long, often difficult journey of in vitro fertilization (IVF). In honour of Canadian Fertility Awareness Week (April 23-29), Watts-Dafoe is sharing her story in the hopes it will start a conversation on a topic that too often is swept under the rug.
“Statistically speaking, one in six people of reproductive age will struggle with infertility when trying to start a family,” said Watts-Dafoe. “That’s a huge amount of people and it seems so funny that there isn’t a conversation about it given the prevalence of it. In my experience, experiencing infertility comes with a lot of fear and isolation because people aren’t talking about it, it’s very easy to think you’re the only ones going through it and that’s why Josh and I try to talk about it so much and we talk about our family building story because we didn’t have people talking about it. Knowing how prevalent it is, if we can put ourselves out there and let people know that we went through this too, it just makes the process a little bit easier for those who are walking through it.”
At the time, few people were actually aware of the struggles they were going through trying to conceive-dealing with everything from the tremendous strain on their mental health to the thousands of dollars out of pocket to cover the costs of IVF treatments.
“I think what it comes down to is there’s uncertainty about where your life direction is going,” said Watts-Dafoe. “Everyone I think whenever they make the decision to have children, assumes it will happen one way or the other. Now all of a sudden you’re thrown into fertility treatments and can we afford this? Am I able to access it? Am I able to get the time off work? It just kind of puts your vision of what your future looks like in this tailspin and makes it really difficult to see through that.”
Watts-Dafoe counts herself as fortunate to have an employer-Napanee’s FireRein- that was willing to be flexible with her schedule, which required multiple trips to a fertility clinic in Toronto over a nine-month period. She also had help from the Ontario government which covered some-but certainly not all-the costs of the treatment.
“There’s the Ontario Fertility Program which covers a funded cycle of IVF. That’s between $15,000 and $20,000 procedure costs,” she said. “But medications can be up to $10,000 per cycle. Then there’s being able to access a clinic. I was paired with a clinic in Toronto. So in 2020 over nine months I did 30 trips to Toronto (from Napanee).”
Though the province didn’t cover the entire cost, the fact that it covered some puts their program ahead of other provinces.
“Even when you have the support of government funding, there’s still so many costs and your time and your resources that can be a barrier, especially for people living in a rural community where we don’t have a fertility clinic, you have to go either Toronto or Ottawa,” said Watts-Dafoe. “There’s provinces on the east coast that don’t even have fertility clinics within their own province. You have to travel outside of your province to receive fertility care.”
Now blessed with a daughter and a second child on the way-also through IVF-Watts-Dafoe felt the need to give back. That’s why along with sharing her story, she’s also a volunteer with Fertility Matters Canada.
“We’re advocating for a national fertility strategy to make access to fertility to care equitable across Canada,” she said of Fertility Matters Canada. “Right now it’s really dependent on where you live what kind of access you might have to services. Seventy five per cent of Canadians don’t live close to a fertility clinic.”
She hopes sharing her story will encourage others to do the same.
“Anyone who is looking to add their voice to the conversation during Fertility Awareness Week, when people think of advocacy they think it’s a big thing, but honestly if people have experienced it and are willing to share their story I would really encourage who are comfortable, to do so,” she said. “Whenever we’re sharing the stories it’s kind of putting up your hand and saying ‘me too, I’ve been through this’. Every time that’s done it kind of removes that stigma that it’s just me going through it and it helps people feel less alone. For those that are able to share those stories, make a post of social media or a video or think about opening up about it. It doesn’t have to be all at once, we don’t have to talk about it just one week a year. It’s something that affects us year round. I also always encourage people to speak with their elected officials if they’re comfortable because the more that we can educate our decision makers whether its your MP or MPP, or even people you work with, all those conversations make a difference.”
For information on different fertility programs across Canada, visit www.FertilityMatters.ca.