Crusade took seed with son's birth

Her son is named Thomas after the apostle for whom seeing was believing.

For Quebec television diva Julie Snyder, five years of fertility treatments finally led to the birth of Thomas, now 3.

"You believe ... only when you have the baby in your arms. We were so happy but we didn't believe it," said Snyder, who will be speaking tonight at the McGill Reproductive Centre about her own experience with infertility.

Despite professional successes - she's currently hosting a top ranked show, Le Banquier, the Quebec version of the game show Deal or No Deal - Snyder said her best achievement by far was having a child.

"Nothing can compare with that - nothing," said Snyder, who is expecting a second child in October with her partner, Pierre-Karl Péladeau, thanks to fertility treatments she received at McGill University Health Centre after failed attempts at other clinics.

Snyder said she is so grateful that she would happily wash the floor of the reproductive clinic that helped her become a mother.

Snyder made no secret of the fact that she had to undergo fertility treatment to achieve both pregnancies.

"When I got pregnant, I swore to God that I would help other women," said Snyder, whose vow translated into a documentary on the subject that included an interview with pop singer Céline Dion. Dion also turned to fertility techniques that resulted in the birth of her son, René-Charles.

But Dion and Snyder have the means to pay for the therapy, which could be as high as $30,000 per attempt.

Most Canadian couples who need help with fertility are out of luck financially.

The majority of treatments are not covered by provincial health insurance agencies, including the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec, although about 25 per cent of the medical cost is reimbursed as a tax credit.

In contrast, abortions and surgeries that prevent conception - vasectomies and tubal litigation - are covered 100 per cent, Snyder said.

"But if you want to have a child, good luck. You better have money," Snyder pointed out.

"It's a paradox in a province so concerned with its declining birth rate."

It seems totally unfair that some people have remortgage their houses to pay for fertility therapy, said Snyder, who also is involved in fundraising for women who cannot afford the treatment.

Quebec should follow the examples of France, Belgium, Australia and Denmark, where artificial reproductive techno-logies including in vitro fertilization are heavily subsidized, she said.

Canadian couples go for hyper-ovulation drugs and opt to implant several embryos at once because they can't afford more than one attempt.

The result is often multiple births, lifelong health risks and costs.

The government would save money if it was paying for reproductive technologies, Snyder said.

Quebec Health Minister Philippe Couillard did not return calls yesterday.

About one in eight couples will face fertility problems.

Many couples don't seek fertility treatment until they've spent years trying for a child, said Roger Pearson, reproductive endocrinologist and past president of Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society.

Child Seat Safety

As a parent, your child's safety is always on your mind.

Saturday, some parents got peace of mind at the State Farm Insurance Child Safety Day.

State Farm agents from Michiana, as well as volunteers from Clay Fire Department and St. Joseph County Police spent time teaching parents the proper way to install child seat's so that their kids are safe.

State Farm Insurance Agent Tim Grauel says, "It's amazing. Last year, across the nation, out of 500 people, about 80 percent were installed improperly. We're looking to make sure seats are new, they fit the size of the kids, they're fastened tightly enough inside the seats and fastened tightly inside the car."

Grauel says the two most common mistakes parents make are not graduating their car seats as their children grow and not fastening infants tightly enough in their seats.

While their parents were learning, the little ones enjoyed themselves getting their faces painted and leaving with balloons.

Two women, 4 ingredients and a best-seller

What started with a simple idea and a conversation over red wine has led to over half a million sales of a cookbook. The authors of 4 Ingredients have found the recipe for small business success.
The story began when entrepreneur and motivational speaker, Rachael Bermingham gave her first book Read My Lips, about marketing and motivation for women, to her friend Kim McCosker.
"Kim was raving about it," says Bermingham. "I said, everybody's got a goodbook in them, and after a few red wines that same day she said, I've got a good idea for a book. She told me that it was a recipe book with [each recipe using] only four ingredients. I said, that's brilliant I would buy that, and my friend next to me said, I would buy that too."
Bermingham, a motivational speaker, kept asking McCosker, a financial planner, about the book's progress until she finally decided to give it a go, on the agreement that Bermingham would co-author it.
"Her idea and my motivation kicked us both into gear. We said we'll give ourselves 12 months. We had the book on her door step at 10 months. We wrote it during our children's sleep times," Bermingham says.
"None of the publishers wanted to know us. `Are you famous, are you a chef?'. `No'. They wouldn't even talk to us, we couldn't get past the secretary in most cases."
So the Sunshine Coast pair decided to appoint their own editor and printer and self-publish, with $20,000 seed funding from McCosker.
4 Ingredients was published in March last year and has since sold 575,000 copies in Australia and New Zealand, with agreements underway from other international distributors. After considering a variety of television proposals, they recently signed a deal with the Lifestyle Channel to present their own cooking show, which will air from September.
Bermingham says there were four key ingredients to the book's success that can be applied to any business: "Idea. Plan. Action. Marketing".
"I've marketed many other companies before and it's still those same four ingredients. You do it a little bit differently to suit the company you are marketing, but it's just the language that changes, not the process," she says.

"There are a lot of people out there with fantastic ideas but they just don't do anything. You need to first of all do something with it, take some action, then marketing is definitely the oxygen.
"I wrote up a press release and sent it out to all the media and press and print entities in Australia. Kim and I both followed up with phone calls and we got on the phones to the book stores too. We keep doing it, we still do it every single week. Just this week alone Lifestyle was filming in my house and I called my local paper to let them know."
Bermingham has no formal training but decades of experience in marketing. She has run many small business, including a travel agency, a speakers' booking agency and a consultancy practice called "Marketing to Success" where she provided advice to women over the phone on how to market their business with a zero budget.
"Whether you are the director of a child care centre or an insurance broker, every single person needs to market their business in some way. I always say if you market properly you don't ever need to sell, your marketing should do that for you."
A positive approach to marketing is important, Bermingham says.
"I think everybody has a problem with selling because they are fearful of rejection, that is a normal human quality. Whatever I'm doing, I come at it from, `How am I benefiting other people'."
Bermingham says excellent customer service and a clearly defined target market are also important for success.
"A lot of people in business don't know who their market is. You need to know what language to use. If my market is women, I'm not going to speak in a male language, because they'll miss the point."
The original target market for 4 Ingredients was busy mothers between the ages of 25 and 55.
"But our market has grown now and we have changed our marketing to capture more of the market because our biggest online buyers now are actually men," says Bermingham.
"Single men may be wanting to wow their partners, and there are a lot of widowed men out there too. You can evolve [your target market] but you need to start somewhere."
Bermingham and McCosker are in the final stage of production of their second cookbook.
They will be self-publishing their second book, despite offers from publishers around the country.