Louise Thompson’s partner Ryan Libbey has admitted he has struggled to come to terms with the fact they are planning to use a surrogate to have another child.

The TV personality, 35, has been documenting her experience on social media after revealing her plans to expand her family, after almost dying while giving birth to her son Leo in 2021 following an emergency caesarean. 

After Leo’s birth, Louise went on to suffer with PTSD and post-natal anxiety due to her near-death experience and has since been diagnosed with Lupus, Asherman’s syndrome, suffered a second haemorrhage, and has also had a stoma bag fitted.

The couple recently explained how they are embarking on IVF and plan to use a surrogate to add to their family. 

Ryan has admitted though that it has taken him a long time to accept that Louise wants to have another child, and the fertility treatment his partner will have to endure. 

Louise broke down in tears in a recent episode of their podcast He Said She Said as Ryan explained: ‘I am still struggling to accept it.

Louise Thompson’s partner Ryan Libbey said he has struggled to come to terms with the fact they are planning to use a surrogate to have another child

Ryan has admitted that it has taken him a long time to accept that Louise wants to have another child, and the fertility treatment his partner will have to endure

‘My motivation to enter this journey with fertility and surrogacy is because you were effectively robbed of being a mum to a newborn because you were so unwell.

‘Regardless of what I’m about to say next, I think that is really, really sad and unfair, and not how it should be at all for any woman.

‘That alone is enough of a reason for me to… I don’t want to say go along with because that makes it sound like I haven’t considered it, but that’s enough pull for me to say yes to the idea of IVF and surrogacy.’

He then added though that surrogacy is ‘still a really f**king bizarre thing for me and I am still struggling to accept it but that does not detract from the reason for it’.

Louise told him that ‘nothing makes me happier than hearing you say that’, because she said that it helped her to hear him open up on his thoughts as previously he would shut down any conversation about adding to their family. 

‘If I tried to talk about it before, like in the car or something – I remember when we were going down to the Cotswolds – and you were like “I don’t want any of this, I can’t do it, you’re forcing me into something I don’t want to do”,’ she said.

‘I know now that you’re saying those things from a place of fear, and you’re pushing away the conversation because what you’re actually carrying is the fear that maybe we can’t make this work, because we’ve got a long journey ahead and also that you’re 50% of this, and there’s a contribution from both sides.

‘It’s going to require an awful lot of work in order for us to have another baby. But I feel like we have turned a corner with it. I feel like we are now really aligned.’

Louise broke down in tears in a recent episode of their podcast He Says She Says as Ryan explained ‘I am still struggling to accept it’

‘Surrogacy, and I don’t think we’ve really like said that out loud publicly, but that is going to be the only way that we will be able to have another baby and as you said it’s something that I think as like a man you really really struggle to to understand.’

Ryan explained though that his fears lie with the fact that Louise will be ‘voluntarily putting yourself back into’ hospital environments again.

‘When you put on a gown and have a blood test, that’s enough to send me off into a bad space,’ he admitted.

‘And then, seeing you laying in a bed after a procedure, like the egg retrieval, which is nothing compared to what you’ve previously had, still hurts me.’

‘It’s a very different thing being in it yourself and then witnessing someone you love going through something like that.’ 

Louise got tearful as she agreed, saying ‘it’s it’s a very different thing, isn’t it? Being in it yourself and then witnessing someone you love go through something like that.’

Taking to Instagram on Friday, Louise shared an update on her fertility journey as she announced herself and Ryan have one embryo ‘in the freezer’ after undergoing IVF. 

Taking to Instagram on Friday, Louise shared an update on her fertility journey as she announced herself and Ryan have one embryo ‘in the freezer’ after undergoing IVF

Sharing the news, Louise posted a picture of a bouquet of flowers Ryan gave her with the message: ‘You did it. One in the freezer for safe keeps x.’

She captioned the picture: ‘One in the freezer for safe keepy’s. ✨ Inside that sentence is a universe. If you’ve listened to the latest episode of our podcast then you might already know what this stands for.

‘For those of you that haven’t – Ryan isn’t always comfortable communicating about this fertility stuff at home… sometimes he’ll even threaten that it’s too much for him to handle, but this bunch of flowers was all I needed to reassure me that we’re reading from the same hymn sheet. And he is VERY good at using words when it’s really needed. 

‘This was NEEDED. You can imagine how much this bunch of flowers meant to me… even when exchanged in silence at the end of a very long grey working day.’

Louise continued: ‘In truth those words hold years of planning, weeks of needles (years including the biologic-jak inhabitor-biologic switch), scans, waiting rooms, clenched jaws, forced optimism, and tears, lots of tears. 

‘It’s the kind of bravery nobody gives you a medal for – and why would they because we’re chosen to pay to go through this process when we could just… not. We could just accept the cards we’ve been dealt. But I don’t want our past trauma to dictate our future.

The TV personality has documented her experience after revealing her plans to expand her family, after almost dying while giving birth to her son Leo in 2021 

‘For those who know this road well, it needs no explanation. Staring at wee sticks. Counting follicles like prayer beads. Tracking bloods meticulously. Learning a whole new language in the hope that it will help us edge closer to our goal.

‘By educating I thought I could control the outcome. But this isn’t predictable like other areas of my life. There is no playbook.’

Detailing their IVF journey, Louise added: ‘From our first cycle we went from seeing 20+ gooood looking follicles on the scan, to getting 8 eggs retrieved to holding onto hope that many of them would make it to day 5. 

‘I did a lot of research and looked at many many stats for people in a similar situation to me (and us), but every case is SO individual and we ended up with just one. One embryo. One possibility. Not the perfect outcome. Especially with an amh averaging 25.

‘It makes me wonder if something else is wrong. Not enough to say “we’re done”. But a chapter where something worked. And that feels like an ok place to start. So we’re letting ourselves process that.

‘One in the freezer. One in our hearts x.’

Scattered snow expected to start in Colorado’s mountains on Tuesday will intensify over the next two days, dropping up to 10 inches of snow on the state’s mountain passes and more than 2 feet on its tallest peaks, according to the National Weather Service.

Travelers should “expect hazardous travel conditions to develop by late Wednesday afternoon, which will continue into Thursday,” weather service forecasters wrote in a hazardous weather outlook.

As of Tuesday, according to the weather service, snowfall amounts are expected to accumulate by 5 a.m. Friday included:

• 2 inches in Eldora and Grand Lake
• 4 inches in Winter Park and on Colorado 9’s Hoosier Pass near Breckenridge
• 5 inches on U.S. 6’s Loveland Pass, U.S. 40’s Berthoud Pass, Colorado 125’s Willow Creek Pass near Granby and Interstate 70’s Vail Pass
• 7 inches on U.S. 40’s Muddy Pass near Kremmling
• 9 inches on U.S. 34’s Milner Pass in Rocky Mountain National Park
• 10 inches on Colorado 14’s Cameron Pass near Fort Collins
• 27 inches on Mount Zirkel, the tallest peak in the Park Range of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains

One of Susan Simpson’s scariest moments as a parent came when her diabetic preteen daughter’s blood sugar became dangerously low while on a tree planting field trip and neither she, nor any classmates, nor teachers had a snack that would prevent a health emergency.

Simpson, who monitors her child’s blood sugar levels from her laptop or phone, was close to calling 911 but managed to get a teacher on the phone and they rounded up the whole class, got on the bus and drove to a gas station so her daughter could get a source of sugar.

Simpson and other parents whose children have Type 1 diabetes are urging the Ministry of Education to create a provincewide standard of care for diabetes in schools, so it doesn’t vary from classroom to classroom, school to school, or board to board.

“For anyone with kids, you just want your kids to enjoy their childhood, be enriched through school or extracurricular activities and be safe while they do those things,” she said.

“Our kids are not safe right now.”

Technological advances in the management of Type 1 diabetes mean that most kids wear a pump that administers insulin so separate needle injections are not needed, and kids can wear a continuous glucose monitor so they can keep track of their blood sugar levels, as can their parents, remotely through an app.

1:01
Call for greater diabetes supports

But that doesn’t mean kids can manage diabetes on their own, especially young students or kids with cognitive disabilities, parents say.

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Alana Diening’s seven-year-old son, for example, needs help doing the math to count the carbs in his food at lunch and inputting them into his pump. Accidentally putting in the wrong number could be life threatening.

“It’s a scary condition, but with the technology that we have, it’s totally doable,” she said. “The kids can thrive, but you can’t do stuff like not help them with their insulin.”

When blood sugar gets too low it can lead to symptoms such as confusion, weakness and shakiness, and even loss of consciousness.

Diening’s son has had reliable support at school through a publicly funded registered practical nurse, who would come to school at lunch to help him, but when the primary nurse went on leave, the care became sporadic and Diening was being told less than an hour before lunch period that no nurse was available that day.

“You talk to the nursing agency and they just say, ‘We don’t have nurses, what do you want us to do?’” she said.

“Then you talk to the school and they’re like, ‘We can’t engage in any part of your son’s care, so there’s nothing we can do.’ And then you go to the school board, and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s the Ministry of Health.”

Diening reached out to her member of provincial parliament and heard nothing. She said she notified the Ministry of Education and heard nothing. Diening then reported the nursing agency to the Children’s Aid Society and that led to more stable care for her son, she said.

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Health Matters: Diabetes mythbusters

“We’ve resolved our situation for the moment, but … at no point do I have any assurance what will happen next week,” Diening said.

Ontario has a policy stating that all school boards should develop and maintain policies to support students with asthma, diabetes, epilepsy and who are at risk for anaphylaxis.

A spokesperson for Education Minister Paul Calandra said the ministry is currently reviewing that policy.

“As part of this review, the ministry will be evaluating implementation of the policy and hosting engagements with academic/clinical experts, condition-specific groups, parents, and education partners to help ensure students have access to a safe, healthy and inclusive learning environment,” Emma Testani wrote in a statement.

The policy is too vague, Diening and other parents say, and should include specific policies on issues such as who will support students with insulin administration, allowing students to keep their cellphone with them because it reads the glucose monitor and taking diabetes kits on field trips, among other measures.

Diabetes Canada is calling on all provinces and territories to implement a standard of care, saying only Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and British Columbia currently have standards that closely align with the national diabetes organization’s guidelines.

Having those types of policies standardized across the province would save parents from fighting individual battles, parents say.

Catherine Grixti’s son was lucky to have a wonderful educational resource worker, who provided reliable care for most of his time in school, she said. But Grixti said a lot has changed now that he is in high school, where most kids have a certain level of independence.

In addition to having Type 1 diabetes he has autism and is not always able to independently make sure his blood sugar is at a safe level, Grixti said. She is almost constantly watching his numbers remotely and messaging or calling him when he needs to take action.

“If he doesn’t pick up on his watch, and if I see that (his blood sugar is) dropping, I’m running to that school and I’m making sure I get to him in time, and if I don’t get to him in time, then I’m calling 911,” Grixti said.

“They have a right to an education … We’re not asking for much. We just want a policy that (schools) have to follow.”

Tacked on the plywood fence keeping intruders away from the long-closed St-Eusèbe-de-Verceil church in Montreal, next to “Free Gaza” and anti-police graffiti, is a poem.

“This church is no more,” begins the unnamed poet. A few lines later, the handwritten verse concludes: “Why is the building moulding too?”

Officials at the once-stately Montreal Catholic church are asking the same question.

After years of neglect, a fire, hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines from the city and repeated break-ins from urban explorers and teens seeking TikTok fame, the church has taken the unusual step of taking the City of Montreal to court to have the building demolished.

With the number of parishioners dwindling and as provincial funding to restore religious buildings dries up, underused churches across Quebec are in a race to transform into something more relevant to the times before they slowly fall into pieces like St-Eusèbe-de-Verceil.

Keeping intruders out has become a huge effort for the parish fabrique — the legal entity that owns the church — and for 77-year-old priest Roger Dufresne.

“They use all kinds of tools to break the windows, break the doors, get inside,” he said. “For young people, it’s mostly to make videos, TikTok challenges.”

Inside the church, the floor of the cavernous sanctuary is covered with debris, bird droppings, beer cans and the mangled remnants of the church’s organ, which Dufresne said intruders ripped from the walls. They’ve also broken heads off statues and repeatedly climbed to the roof, trying to ring the church bell.

The paint is gone from the walls, thanks to a 2019 fire, and has been replaced by graffiti, including a message that reads, “the devil was here.” The sound of cooing pigeons and the flapping of wings echoes through the space, which once accommodated some 1,000 worshippers.

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Dufresne and the Montreal Catholic archdiocese believe there is nothing left to save, but they say they are having a difficult time getting a demolition permit from the city. In a court application filed Jan. 7, the St-Eusèbe-de-Verceil parish asked a judge to grant a demolition permit, citing health and security reasons as well as financial limitations.

The court document says the church’s main sanctuary hasn’t been used since 2009. Since then, church officials have tried several times to partner with companies to redevelop the site, but they say the initiatives fell through because of costs or constraints imposed by the city.

The church says it has spent more than $100,000 trying to secure the site since 2017, including by hiring security guards. Despite those efforts, the document states the church has incurred more than $219,000 in fines related to the structural integrity of the building. The City of Montreal declined to comment on the case, and the lawyer representing the parish said no court date had been set as of Thursday.

After the 2019 fire, an engineering firm had estimated the cost of repairing and restoring the church at more than $50 million, the document says. That firm, CIMA+, “concludes that a total demolition of the building is the preferred solution from every point of view, in terms of economic viability … but also in terms of safety,” it reads.

Stefano Marrone, who oversees the Montreal Catholic archdiocese’s real estate arm, says safety is the main reason the church needs to be demolished. Police and fire officials, he said, have expressed reticence to enter the building, which is a problem given frequent intrusions by young people, including some who climb on the roof.

However, he’s also hoping the permit will help move the development project forward. Normally, he said, a demolition request would be presented to the city as part of broader redevelopment plan, but in this case it’s hard to get a developer on board with such a big question mark hanging over the building.

“It’s difficult to get collaborators to come in when there’s uncertainty of what will need to be conserved, what will need to demolished, how that transformation process begins,” he said in a phone interview.

He says the church officials would like to find a partner to redevelop the site as a mixed-use project that would include housing and “community aspects.” He said the church would like to stay involved, including potentially retaining and renovating the presbytery to continue to host services.

“I know that there’s a lot of emotions around churches, regardless of someone’s faith,” he said. “If it’s been in their community for a long time, (citizens) feel a connection to it and we’re very sensitive to that.”

He said any money earned from the sale will be used to renovate other churches — something that’s become more necessary as the province has suspended a key program that granted funding for church renovations.

Solange Lefebvre, who holds the chair of cultural and religious diversity at Université de Montréal’s religious studies department, says Quebec has historically been successful at selling or repurposing churches before demolition is needed.

However, she said costs to renovate have skyrocketed, meaning repurposing has become impractical for some churches, and especially large ones.

“We have too many places of worship in Quebec, so eliminating some of them is a good idea,” she said. “For example, given that land is so valuable, why not build social housing or even completely private housing instead?”

Dufresne, for his part, would also like to see the site become housing. He said fewer than a dozen people regularly attend weekly services, which are held in a corridor attached to the presbytery.

“We have to be realistic these days about the needs we have and the current situation … with a chapel of 100, 200 places, we could easily meet our needs,” he said. After decades as a priest, he’s philosophical about seeing churches close.

“We can’t have ideas of grandeur,” he said.

Ten years after the Manitoba government made a requirement that health care facilities be equipped with fire sprinklers by January 2026, the province is extending the deadline for sprinkler installations to the end of 2028.

“It’s an extraordinary problem,” says national seniors advocate Laura Tamblyn Watts, who says Manitoba should have had the sprinklers in place by now. “A delay back 10 years ago, that was too long to wait then and it’s too long to wait now.”

“We haven’t met a 10-year plan to meet the most basic fire safety needs in health care and especially for places like personal care homes where our most vulnerable population resides,” said Tamblyn Watts, the CEO of CanAge. 

A decade ago, a Jan. 19, 2016, provincial government news release said “changes to the Manitoba Fire Code will require automatic sprinkler systems to be installed in all hospitals, licensed personal care homes and residential care facilities in Manitoba by Jan. 1, 2026.”

The move followed a tragic 2014 fire at a seniors’ residence in L’Isle-Verte, Que., that claimed the lives of 32 people.  

As of last Friday, Feb. 6, the government amended the Manitoba Fire Code regulation by eliminating the Jan. 1, 2026 deadline and “substituting Dec. 31, 2028” after CBC asked questions about the status of the work.

After repeated requests from CBC News, the government now tells CBC that out of 194 hospitals, personal care homes, and health centres, 117 facilities have full sprinkler coverage, but 77 facilities do not. 

The ones without full sprinkler systems are determined to be not in compliance with the regulations.

With construction underway, another 41 sites are scheduled to reach compliance by the end of March 2027, which would make 158 of the 194 facilities completed. 

That would leave another 36 sites remaining to be completed by Dec. 31, 2028, the province said.

One location that hasn’t completed sprinkler installation is the 136-bed Winnipeg personal care home Fred Douglas Lodge.

Greg Reid, CEO of Fred Douglas Society which owns the personal care home, says he expects the project to be finished by the fall of 2028, adding he blames the pandemic and cost overruns for delays in getting the work done.

WATCH | Deadline extended for fire sprinkler installations at health-care facilities:

Manitoba extends deadline for fire sprinkler installations at health-care facilities

A 10-year deadline has passed for health-care facilities — including personal care homes — to install fire sprinklers, but dozens still don’t have them. That deadline was extended by the Manitoba government after CBC News started asking questions about the status of the work.

He says work on the project began about six months ago. 

“Extending the deadline will mean that most, if not all, projects will be completed. I know ours will be completed by then,” Reid told CBC News.

He said he was not aware of the deadline extension until he learned about it from CBC, but said “I guess I’m not surprised given there are a number of personal care homes in the same situation as us.”

Some personal care homes and hospitals had posted tenders in January calling for bid submissions for installing sprinklers.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said in an interview that sprinkler installation “is something that should’ve been done years ago. It wasn’t. We’re making sure that everyone’s on the same page.”

“We’ve got the infrastructure we need and the plans in place to get this done and we just changed the timeline to reflect the construction realities and the work that’s being done,” Asagwara said.

In February 2022, the previous provincial government announced spending $280 million for fire safety at personal care homes, hospitals, and health care facilities.

At that time, a provincial news release said the facilities would have “full or partial sprinkler systems installed over the next six to eight years,” implying that some facilities would not meet the January 2026 deadline.