Gordons. We have selected them for our introduction because their story and their perspective cover the central themes in this book. As with all the families who have shared their stories with us, we have changed their names, geographical location and occupations in order to respect their privacy. We have not changed key facts central to their story.
Meet Carla, Rob, Rebecca, Jennifer, Jake and Matt
A visitor arriving at Carla and Rob Gordon’s home has an immediate reaction: KIDS! The Gordons’ spacious front porch is filled with bikes, sporting equipment, a double stroller. A glance to the back yard reveals a swing set and a trampoline. This is a busy family, one thinks. This is a home filled with kids.
And indeed it is, but it was not always this way. Fifteen years ago, when Carla and Rob bought an old colonial farmhouse in what was then a quiet, rural town about 65 miles north of Boston, they were looking forward to having a child. Then another. They were 26 years old, recently married, newly minted master’s-trained teachers who chose to buy in “Rutherford” (we are changing all names to protect privacy) because it was affordable, had good schools and seemed to be an all-round fine place to raise a family. First came love, then came marriage, then came the house and now for the baby carriage.
Like many couples who come upon infertility unexpectedly, Carla and Rob were initially baffled when Carla did not conceive. After all, they were young, led very healthy lives, had no family history of infertility and had been dutifully using birth control since first they met. Who us? they thought. Not us. We were made to have babies.
And they certainly were, but not yet. When they had been trying to for a year, Carla sought medical attention, assuming that the problem was hers. Fortunately, her physician did not make the same mistake and told her that before he did any testing on her, he wanted Rob to do a semen analysis. “After all,” Carla’s physician said, “it is the man about half the time.”
And indeed it was, but not entirely. Rob was tested and the couple was told that he had a very low sperm count—so low, in fact, that it was “fruitless” for the couple to try to conceive with Rob’s sperm. The Gordons were stunned and upset that anyone could dismiss Rob’s paternity so cavalierly and usher them on to donor sperm “as if it were nothing.”
In fact, thinking about donor sperm was hardly nothing! Carla and Rob remember spending several months thinking about donor insemination (DI), all the while “hoping the doctor was wrong and that we’d get pregnant on our own.” But that didn’t happen, Carla and Rob spent a good deal of time talking about what it would mean to have a child that was genetically connected to Carla but not to Rob, especially since Carla would carry the child for nine months. After a time the Gordons realized that they were beginning to feel receptive to the idea of using donor sperm. It was time to pick a donor.
When they made the decision to use donor sperm, Carla and Rob felt a sense of relief. “We’d done all the hard work—or so we thought.” The couple felt certain that deciding on donor sperm was the difficult part and that picking a donor would be an easier task. The process of decision making had brought them closer together, and both approached donor selection with optimism. “We’d have some fun with it. We’d look at profiles closely. We’d find someone we really wanted to have as a part of our family.”
The Gordons’ sense of fun and optimism carried them only so far and lasted only so long. The couple, who had expected to conceive easily on their own, now anticipated conceiving immediately with the first donor they selected. Neither could ever have anticipated trying with three donors and going through a series of fertility treatments all the way up to IVF.
“Eventually, we did conceive, and by that time it practically didn’t matter that it was with donor sperm,” says Rob. He remembers just wanting a baby and not caring so much how the baby came. But, for Carla, it was different. She recalls being pregnant with the couple’s first daughter, Rebecca, and worrying that Rob wouldn’t love this baby. When Rebecca was born and Rob was not as involved and attentive as Carla was, she worried that her fears had come to pass. It was not until one day—a week or two into motherhood—that she burst into tears and said, “I’m so sad that you don’t love her.” What a relief it was for Carla when Rob looked at her, baffled and confused, and said, “Of course I do. Of course I do.”
And, of course, he did. Rob and Rebecca were close from the start and remain so, even as Rebecca, now 11, heads towards adolescence. For Carla, watching her husband and their firstborn share such a strong bond has been a source of great joy and relief. Her pleasure has increased all the more since the couple’s second daughter, Jennifer, came along. Jennifer was not conceived with donor sperm: Rob is her biological father.
So how did that happen, you ask? Thrilled with Rebecca, Carla and Rob returned to the fertility clinic that had “given us our daughter” and requested “the same again.” They wanted the same donor, the same treatment and hoped for the same outcome. To their surprise, the physician responded to their request with a very different recommendation: “I know that we told you something different a few years ago, but with the use of ICSI—intracytoplasmic sperm injection, where a single sperm is injected into the egg for fertilization—we believe that you can probably conceive with Rob’s sperm.”
This news startled Rob and Carla as much as the original bleak pronouncement had a few years earlier. They were, however, happy to take the doctor up on his offer to try IVF with Rob’s sperm. Fortunate to live in Massachusetts, which has enjoyed an insurance mandate since 1985, the Gordons did not have to worry about the cost of treatment. Insurance would cover IVF and ICSI, and if treatment didn’t work, there was nothing ventured, nothing lost financially. They would simply turn to DI again. DI had blessed them with a wonderful first child, and Rob and Carla were certain that it would work again.
This time around it wasn’t going to be quite so difficult. The first IVF cycle didn’t bring a pregnancy, but it did bring nice evidence of fertilization. The same thing was true the second time around. “We were a little discouraged, but our experience trying to get pregnant a few years earlier had taught us that patience and fortitude pay off.”
And indeed they did. Carla was pregnant on the third IVF-ICSI cycle, and she gave birth to Jennifer nine months later.
“Was it amazing for you to be the biological father to your child?” we asked Rob.
“No,” he replied. “What was amazing was to see her born at home. Rebecca was there too and she was very much a part of things.”
A home birth is hardly something that most infertile couples aspire to. “Give me the lights, the instruments, the cast of thousands and all the machines,” many veterans of infertility declare. Many—but not Carla Gordon. For Carla, who hates to take so much as an aspirin, the whole high-tech trip through infertility had been difficult—“something I had to cope with because I wanted a baby so much.” Now, with a healthy, uneventful pregnancy, she was determined to have as natural an experience as she could—a home birth followed by a long period of nursing.
When Jennifer was four years old, baby fever struck again. Although Carla and Rob had initially anticipated having two children and had felt prepared to “bargain for one” before Rebecca was born, their struggles with infertility had altered their sense of family. “We had come to appreciate what an incredible miracle every child is and we wanted more. The only problem was that I had just about aged out of the picture.”
Carla, 26 when it all began, was 40 when she and Rob returned to the fertility center for yet another try. “By this time they had declared that Rob was just fine, but I could see that the doctor was worried about my eggs. He did an FSH and a clomiphene citrate challenge test and came back with news that was remarkably similar to the news we had gotten about Rob nearly 14 years earlier. “You are wasting time to try on your own.
