It’s a challenge a growing number of women face, the challenge of having a family – statistics from the Edmonton Fertility Clinic show 1 in 7 will deal with infertility – although many couples struggle in silence.
One Edmonton couple has shared their story with CTV’s Carrie Doll, in the hopes of helping other families work out the countless options they have.
“They wanted to educate people about the vast number of resources that exist here in Edmonton,” CTV’s Carrie Doll said. “As you’ll discover through their journey is some procedures do exist in Edmonton, but they come with a whole array of challenges.”
Schoena and Jason Strudwick had both long-hoped to have a family of their own, but after months of trying in 2006, they went to a doctor for testing – and infertility’s shadow was cast over their dreams of having children.
At the time, Strudwick was playing for the New York Rangers, and doctors in New York said Strudwick had a low sperm count.
Despite all that, the couple underwent three rounds of intrauterine fertilization, and a round of in-vitro fertilization – all of those procedures failed.
“She did all those rounds of IVF, and all of those drugs pouring through her body, and she was tough,” Jason Strudwick said. “She’d just keep going back for another round and another round.”
Facing a misdiagnosis
Eventually, the couple came back to Edmonton – as Strudwick played for the Edmonton Oilers – and they saw local fertility specialist Dr. Terek Motan.
However, faced with a seven month wait at the Edmonton Fertility Clinic, they looked for other options – they found a private clinic in British Columbia, with no wait time.
It’s at that clinic the couple was told the doctors in New York were wrong, and Jason’s sperm count wasn’t the problem.
“They did a bunch of testing, extensive testing, and they diagnosed me with what’s called premature ovarian failure,” Schoena Strudwick said, essentially, they were told the attempts they had made over the previous 18 months, and spent $30,000 on, were doomed to fail.
“We did another three rounds of IVF in Vancouver, and then the doctors there said we could do this another 15 times and it’s not going to produce a child.”
“On any one day, 25 percent of my patients are in tears, and no one is dying,” Dr. Motan said. “Patients have told me, death is merciful because it has an end.
“This is an emptiness that keeps hurting.”
‘A turning point for us’
The couple mourned the loss of the chance of having biological children, and decided to see a psychologist to help them deal with the reality they faced.
“They really needed permission to calm down, relax, do some grieving over their circumstances at the moment, and not being able to conceive,” Psychologist Dr. Jim Canniff said. “To then re-energize and enjoy their lives, because life was passing them by.”
His advice was simple, they were allowed to talk about their infertility once a week – and only for half an hour – the couple set a timer for those conversations, and when it went off, the talk was over.
“That was a turning point for us, because he helped us to see that the end result is going to be the same, and what we had to do was continue to live our life, because fertility consumes you, you become obsessed,” Schoena said.
“It helped us to reconnect, and refocus on our life.”
“It let them pay attention to the rest of life, and what was going on around them,” Dr. Canniff said. “To not be focused on how either of them was not holding up their end of the bargain.”
Their doctor also helped keep the seed of hope alive for the couple.
“He kept saying to us, that it’s going to come, whether it’s in two weeks, two months, or a year and a half, you are going to get your family,” Schoena said.
At this, the family learned a valuable lesson about what could make up their future family – that their children might not necessarily share their DNA.
“We knew we were going to get there, we just didn’t know what [our family] was going to look like,” Jason said.
Getting the wheels in motion for adoption
The Strudwicks started the process of looking into adoption – a complicated idea in itself. The couple wanted a closed adoption, but in Alberta, legislation did not work in their favour.
“In Alberta, 2005 legislation ruled that all adoptions are open, so there is contact between birth parents and the adoptive parents,” Doll said.
They couple decided to apply to for a closed adoption, to adopt a baby from the United States with the International Adoption program in Edmonton.
It took 14 months to complete a mountain of paperwork, and their home study – in the end, there was no timeline for how long it could be before they were chosen by a birth mother.
Looking at other options
Meanwhile, they decided to try getting pregnant with the help of an egg donor.
The procedure is approved in Canada, and is available in Edmonton – but it’s complicated.
“This is what a patient would have to go through, if they wanted to have it done, you can have what’s called an altruistic donation,” Doll said. “If it’s a gift, doctors will take them process them, culture them, implanted.”
“Number 2, you can buy them online from outside Canada, have them shipped here, and they will process them.”
Schoena and Jason found out they could have it all done at one fertility clinic in Seattle, so they travelled south to the Seattle Reproductive Medicine Clinic, where they bought eggs – had them fertilized, prepared and implanted in a procedure with a 66 percent success rate.
“We walk in to meet the Dr. Lin, he looks at our file, he says, I know your issue,” Jason said. “We’re going to get you pregnant; it was just the biggest load off.”
The couple went through their first IVF procedure using a donor egg in the spring of 2010, it was successful, but they lost the baby nine weeks later.
“At this point, I had basically been on fertility drugs and hormones and injections for four years essentially,” Schoena said. “We decided we would kinda put it off for a little bit,”
At the end of the year, they tried again.
“We had two frozen embryos left from the donor in that first cycle, and we said, let’s just go and use them, and get it done, and close that door,” Schoena said. “And that’s Marley.”
After years of trying, they were finally preparing for having one child of their very own – but in this case, the statement ‘when it rains, it pours’ could not be more true, because not long after Schoena’s pregnancy was confirmed, the family received a long-awaited call.
“They called us and said ‘I know you said you wanted to freeze your file, but a birth mom that same day had a baby boy, and chose you guys,” Schoena said.
With files from Carrie Doll
Tune in to CTV Edmonton’s website and CTV News at Six Tuesday, April 9 to hear what Jason and Schoena Strudwick faced next...
