Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Baby Boom Baby Bust - Infertile couples face a maze of hope, strain and science

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Infertile couples face a maze of hope, strain and science (Pt. 4)

The Huntes are among the majority of infertility patients who do conceive a baby at some point, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles because they believe the best care lies outside of Pittsburgh.

Others spend months or years trying different methods without success. That's when many turn to adoption, sometimes by virtue of some magical internal signal that says, simply, enough is enough.

"It was like a huge weight off our shoulders," Harris said. "It's like all of a sudden you walk through a door, and it's behind me. I think we got so low, there was nowhere to go but up."


	Gary and Cheryl Fedders, above, have the time to build their dream home in Wilkins after giving up on efforts to conceive a child. They happily pronounce themselves "child-free."

She and Horwitz paid $10,000 from savings -- far less than they spent on three in vitro treatments -- to the Children's Home of Pittsburgh to receive Benjamin, a biracial child given up by his mother. Now the couple delights in his reaction to their cats, packing his lunch, taking him for walks -- the same, they say, as they would have with a child they conceived.

The Sowells accumulated about $15,000 in costs, including travel, to obtain Tessa from a Chinese orphanage through a St. Louis-based agency.

Adoption is not a solution for everyone. Some who go through grueling efforts at overcoming their infertility aren't interested in the same expenditure of emotion and money for someone else's child.

"For some, it doesn't feel natural," said Gail Hunter, a Fox Chapel psychotherapist who experienced infertility herself. "There is a very strong and powerful expectation that you will have your own biological child. . . . It's what genetically we are predisposed to do, culturally we are predisposed to do, spiritually predisposed to do."

Gary and Cheryl Fedders, who never stopped enjoying the experience of others' children during their six-year battle with infertility, never considered adopting. The Wilkins couple simply realized they didn't want infertility treatment any more -- they wanted each other.

They travel together, dine out together late in the evening, build a dream home together by hand on weekends -- complete with a studio for Cheryl's vocation: children's portraits. They consider themselves happily "child-free" rather than forlornly childless.


Bonni and Joe Prince of Madison, Westmoreland County, at left, are among many infertile couples who shower affection upon pets.

"Having infertility has forced us into a lifestyle that we're very happy about," said Gary, a Carnegie Mellon associate professor. "I don't go to Chuck E. Cheese -- I admit it, thank God!"

But they and other infertile couples also acknowledge -- or complain -- that the world seems built for families. The older they become, the more their friends have children and socialize differently than they can.

Many infertile couples turn to pet dogs and cats, giving them the love and affection they always intended to shower upon children. It helps, but rarely enough.

Bonni Prince, who has two dogs and is beginning the road to adoption, explains, "We want to complete our family. We know we can love a child. We know we can support a child. . . . Right now, we have each other, and people say that's a family, but . . . "