Jack's life began a little more than three years ago on a television monitor in a small room in Oklahoma.
As parents-to-be John and Jill watched the screen, a tiny tube appeared and what resembled two tiny air bubbles emerged from its tip.
To John and Jill those were more than just air bubbles. They represented four years of frustration, bad news and tens of thousands of dollars in expenditures.
Those bubbles were John and Jill's chance at what so many other couples have, but they had so far been unable to achieve — a chance to be parents.
In the beginning
When John and Jill married seven years ago, they knew they wanted to have children. And they knew they wanted more than one.
"I was always going to have more than one," John says. "My only caveat was that it had to be multiples of two. We have more than one and it would be multiples of two."
Shortly after their wedding, Jill tossed the birth control pills in the trash. But after seven months, there was no success — Jill had not even experienced a period. She went to her doctor, who referred her to an obstetrician/gynecologist. Despite her doctor's reassurances, one tidbit of information kept nagging at her — she had a family history of premature ovarian failure, otherwise known as early menopause.
"I suspected there might be some issues with me but I had never shown any indications that there should be a problem," Jill says.
In the interim the couple went through the usual dance of taking temperature, charting and taps on the shoulder to indicate it was "time." They bought a $250 ovulation predictor kit. Jill took medication to induce a period, as well as the popular fertility drug clomid, all with no success.
One day in November Jill, all of 29 years old, listened as the obstetrician/gynecologist walked in and unceremoniously announced she could not conceive. It was as she'd suspected — early menopause.
"He said to me, 'Yeah, your ovaries are done. So go home and get used to the idea.'"
She drove crying to her parents' house. John excused himself from a meeting to be with her. They were subsequently referred to what was the beginning of the Royal Alexandra Fertility and Endocrinology Clinic.
As John and Jill understood the diagnosis, Jill had basically run out of eggs. While the majority of women have enough eggs to remain fertile to the age of 50, women like Jill produce only half that quantity. The diagnosis is usually confirmed in women younger than 40 with a blood test for follicle stimulating hormone (FSH). If FSH levels are high, it indicates the pituitary gland is screaming for the ovaries to release an egg that isn't coming. The condition affects less than one per cent of women.
False hopes
John and Jill met soon after with Dr. Tarek Motan, one of the Capital region's leading experts in infertility. Dr. Motan declined to be interviewed for this story.
John remembers the first visit very clearly.
"He said, 'The first thing you need to understand is, when you're here to see me, it's not about whether you will be parents, it's how you will be parents,' " John recalls. "And it wasn't said with a God complex or a life-creating complex, it was a matter of fact — I can, in some way, make you parents if you choose to be."
They tried a few more medical procedures — one involved flushing Jill's fallopian tubes to remove any obstructions, while the other involved forcing her ovaries to let go of any eggs they might be holding on to. But nothing worked. They were left with two choices — adoption or egg donation. And for reasons John chooses to keep private, adoption was not an alternative.
"[Egg donation] was the only other intervention that existed that could be done," John says. "In Canada, Dr. Motan said it's not possible to pay a donor and there is no such thing as a donor bank."
Egg donation and the law
In 2004, the Canadian government passed the Assisted Human Reproduction Act into law, aimed predominantly at outlawing cloning, experimenting with embryos and paying surrogates. But it also clamped down on egg donation by making it illegal to purchase a woman's eggs. Any donor would have to be willing to go through months of fertility treatment and a painful harvesting procedure.
For a time John and Jill thought they had found such a person. A woman they knew, who was preparing for tubal ligation surgery, offered to donate her eggs. After passing all the necessary screening procedures, the trio began making regular trips to an in vitro fertilization clinic in Calgary. John and Jill paid the $2,400 in prescription drugs for their donor. What appeared promising, however, turned into heartache. When Jill woke up the day of a scheduled ultrasound to see if their donor's eggs were ready for harvesting, she received an email from the woman backing out.
"It was devastating," Jill says. "You felt like you were so close and you put so much emotional energy into this and financially, none of this is covered by benefits."
But the couple wasn't ready to give up.
"We just said, 'Screw it. Let's go the States,'" John says.
In the United States, paying for an egg donor is legal — in fact many young college women help pay their bills by donating their eggs. And clinics in the United States know of the restrictions placed on Canadians and subsequently even advertise their services online specifically to Canadians. The practice has given rise to the term "reproductive tourism" to describe jaunts across the border in pursuit of pregnancy, though many other countries offer similar treatments. In an email, Dr. Motan cited his fear the Canadian government would make such ventures more difficult as his reason for declining an interview.
"It may harm care to couples devoid of options," he wrote.
After consulting with friends in Oklahoma, John and Jill decided on the Centre for Reproductive Health at the Oklahoma University Medical Centre. Staff at this clinic also declined an interview request, citing the university's strict policies about speaking to media.
John and Jill made the trip from St. Albert in July for their first appointment. They also selected their egg donor, the services of whom are managed by a different agency. When John and Jill signed off on the woman, the donor agency informed the clinic of their choice. That donor was then placed under the clinic's care. Jill too was placed on a drug regimen to prepare her body for pregnancy.
In October the couple returned to Oklahoma. By the time they arrived, the donor eggs had already been harvested. After two days of testing, John went into the clinic to provide the sperm for the procedure, which were mixed with the donor eggs. Over the next two days, the couple received regular phone calls from the clinic, updating them on how many eggs had been fertilized, how many were looking viable and how many weren't. Three days later they were summoned to the clinic and as they watched on a TV monitor, two fertilized eggs were implanted in Jill's uterus.
"You always see in the movies with the woman lying on her back for two weeks. The nurse at the clinic said that by the time you leave here, you're either pregnant or you're not," John says.
Within days there were telltale signs. John had taken to chewing pomegranate-flavoured gum. He would leave packages in the car and three days after the procedure, the aroma was making Jill nauseous.
"The smell just made me want to throw up and I thought, 'This is odd,'" Jill says. "There were also a couple of dizzy spells."
In their levity after the procedure, John and Jill started referring to their potential child as "the stowaway," given it felt like they were sneaking a person onto the plane back home. They had to wait two weeks to take a pregnancy test. The results were sent to their doctor in Oklahoma, who called to share the news.
"It was phenomenal," Jill says. "All the pieces were starting to fall into place like everything was supposed to be. We didn't expect any other result."
Despite their elation, they calculated the financial cost of their journey. Excluding the friendly egg donor, travelling to Oklahoma for the procedure and its cost totalled about $55,000. In their minds it was worth it.
"It was one of the best days of our lives for sure," Jill says.
Nine months later, Jack was born, weighing in at a healthy eight pounds, 12 ounces. He is now a perfect two-and-a-half-year-old boy who loves playing with the iPad, swimming at Servus Credit Union Place and jumping on the couch when he's not supposed to. He will be their only child — there will be no multiples of two. And they will tell him about the egg donor when he is old enough to understand.
"The rest," Jill says, "is pretty much history."
For legal and privacy reasons, the Gazette has changed the names of some of the individuals involved.
