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  Infertile couples face a maze of hope, strain and science (Pt. 3) After a couple in treatment attempts to conceive -- whether by intercourse, artificial insemination or in vitro -- another two-week period sets in. That's to wait for another blood test that will tell if they're pregnant. The result is more often no than yes, for any type of procedure, and the time frame is excruciating either way. Men and women tend to handle the process differently. Many women can't stop talking about the subject. Men tire of it more quickly. They want to act in some way, but usually, there's a lot less for them to do than their partners. Over two weeks' time, the pressure mounts for both spouses, with few outlets. Then maybe it's repeated again the next month. And the next. It's part of a boom-and-bust cycle of emotions that wears down virtually any couple. "If you want to be obsessive, this will capture all your obsessions in one tight, neat package," said Brian Zikmund-Fisher, 28, whose wife walked into their Point Breeze home one night to find him dazed and crying over poor results of a semen analysis. The Carnegie Mellon University graduate student had scrawled an abbreviated obscenity across the results. After three unsuccessful intrauterine inseminations, he and wife Naomi traveled to Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine in Norfolk, Va., in late summer to try in vitro. She became quite the picture of pregnancy to her special education students in Spring Hill before taking modified bed rest as a precaution for the baby expected May 29.
Caroline Harris and Colin Horwitz, a Highland Park pair of Ph.D. research scientists, went through three attempts at in vitro, fixated each time on the pending results. "It's like there's nothing else you can do during that time," said Harris, 37. They received negative results each time, and, "I would want to crawl up under an afghan and be left alone. He would want to go down to the basement and build shelves." "Men being men, if there's a problem, they want to solve it, and when they can't, it makes them helpless," said infertility counselor Elizabeth Cessna. "For women, it's a relief just to talk it out." Some couples talk with one another better than others, but they all seem to hit a wall in seeking understanding from friends and relatives. Often, they just don't try. "For someone who hasn't gone through it, they're not able to understand it in any way," Harris said. "People make a joke like, 'Well, you can have my kids,' and it's just not funny." For those most affected by infertility, women start avoiding baby showers. Religious couples stop attending services, because there's so much emphasis on children and family. Some people resent longtime friends who have children or become pregnant. They glare at parents who speak harshly to their kids in public. "It bothers you because you see all the people with kids who don't appreciate what they have," Joe Prince explained. "You see them jerking the kids around the store, yelling at them, and I just want to go up and slap them." Some couples are more willing than others to be around children, wishing the best for friends' and relatives' pregnancies. But best intentions can be sabotaged, as was the case for Wanda Sowell. She willingly attended a birthday party for a friend's 1-year-old, but was in the midst of a difficult drug-and-insemination cycle. The mix didn't go well. "I sat in the shadows, with tears coming down from my eyes, hoping no one would notice," said Sowell, who is much happier today, with the adopted daughter she and her husband brought home from China in September. With infertility more in the open than before, there are others willing to put themselves in the spotlight. The Rev. David Hunte says he had no choice. He was going to miss so much work at his church in Jeannette, to be with his wife in treatments in New Jersey, that he had to tell his employer, a congregation of 380. From the pulpit and in First Presbyterian Church's weekly newsletters, he apprised the parishioners that he and his wife, Teresa, were undergoing in vitro last year and asked for their prayers. When the procedure failed, he told them the next Sunday morning. "It was hard -- I looked back to Teresa in the choir loft, and she was tearing up -- but it's easier to tell 400 people at one time than separately," said Hunte, who was able to advise the parishioners late last year that a second procedure had worked. They are expecting a child on Aug. 22.
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