CBC’s How to Buy a Baby injects humour into infertility

I never knew infertility could be so funny. Yet there I was, giggling as Jane begged Charlie to “just stick it in my…” What she was asking him to put in there was not what I’d expected, nor was it where I’d initially thought. And that made How to Buy a Baby so hilarious.

Created by Wendy Litner and starring Meghan Heffern (Wynonna Earp) as Jane and Marc Bendavid (Dark Matter) as her husband Charlie, all 10 episodes dropped Monday on CBC’s website. Litner—who has written for The Globe and Mail, Today’s Parent (read her story about How to Buy a Baby), has a blog and most recently served as story editor on The Beaverton—is on the advisory board of Fertility Matters Canada, providing information, support, awareness and education about infertility. And, with How to Buy a Baby, she also provides laughter.

With Jane and Charlie struggling to get pregnant, it only made sense they’d run into an old friend, Debbie, at a coffee shop in Episode 1. A friend with a newborn snuggled up tightly to her chest, professing that motherhood is “f—ing amazing.” Because, of course, success in life can only be marked by motherhood. The moment is there for a chuckle but then leads into that awkward discussion regarding when Jane and Charlie are going to have a child and the whole infertility thing is mentioned. Debbie suggests a juice cleanse will solve that because it worked for someone she knew. The scene spotlights just how well-meaning, but dunderheaded, some folks can be. Jane and Charlie don’t have any problems going into detail outlining their issues—his testicles and her uterine wall—to Debbie, before leaving.

Produced by LoCo Motion Pictures (My 90-Year-Old Roommate), How to Buy a Baby is able to show the silliness in what traditionally could be seen as sad. Charlie is in the middle of providing a semen sample when his mother shoots him a text and Jane worries she’s got an ugly vagina.

There are truly touching scenes too: in Episode 2, Jane outlines to Charlie’s mother the intricacies of in vitro fertilization. It’s less than a minute long—Charlie’s sister, Alley (Mr. D‘s Emma Hunter) ruins the moment—but it’s there and drives home a key point: open discussion about subjects like infertility needs to happen. We’re getting better at discussing mental health out in the open; let’s hope the rest of the body comes next.

Watch all 10 episodes of How to Buy a Baby now via CBC’s website.

Image courtesy of LoCo Motion Pictures.

 

 

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