Explore the heartbreak and courage surrounding the world of alternative childbearing through the stories of five Orange County women.

Explore the heartbreak and courage surrounding the world of alternative childbearing through the stories of five Orange County women.

JEBB HARRIS/THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Over six million women in the United States are affected by infertility, but many refuse to give up on their dream of raising a family. Coast explores the stories of five Orange County women, whose emotionally complex quests for motherhood exemplify the heartbreak, courage and eventual triumph that come with the complicated -- and miraculous -- world of alternative childbearing methods.

Photo by ralph palumbo Airica Cassel with her twins, Ava and Brenna

IN VITRO FERTILIZATION: TRY, TRY AGAIN

Airica Cassel is strolling peacefully through a park in Irvine, the picture of young motherhood. Her fraternal twins, Ava and Brenna, just a month old, wriggle inside their twin stroller -- a metaphor that, for so long, seemed like a miracle that happened only to other people. People she envied. Cassel, the quintessential girl next door with an engaging laugh and an easy smile, is now able to speak animatedly about her pregnancy with the twins. But when talk turns to what it took to get there, the toll it took to get pregnant, her tone, while still upbeat, is less so.

Though one would never guess that the struggle to have those babies took more than three years, Cassel, a neonatal intensive care unit nurse, couldn't have known either: She had endometriosis, a condition in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows elsewhere in the pelvic region, causing pain and scar tissue that results in infertility in 30-40% of the women it affects.

Surgery to remove the excess tissue followed, but not before several attempts at IUI, or intra-uterine insemination. Each time, her eggs didn't take, and each time, she held out hope for the next cycle, the new medications, a slightly different method. "It was really difficult," Cassel says. "There would be times when I'd think that maybe it just wasn't in the cards for us." And then there was the emotional roller coaster, the "it's-okay-if-I'm-not-like-everyone-else" pep talk, which soon gave way to, "though it'd be nice if I were." "On a walk recently, my husband said, ?Gosh, we're that family that you used to get mad at,'" she recalls. "Because I would -- I'd be like, ?Why can't I have a baby?' There wasn't necessarily jealousy, but... well, I guess there was."

As agonizing as Cassel's quest for pregnancy was, it's hardly uncommon. In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a process that, from 1981 to 2002, delivered nearly 300,000 babies in the U.S. alone, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. It's an option that, for many diagnosed infertile couples, has been a life raft in a sea turbulent with unanswered pleas and anxious, growing desperation to conceive -- a feeling Cassel came to know and understand well during her highs of hope and lows of failure.

According to Dr. Mark Kan, a board-certified IVF specialist and director of Newport Beach-based Newport Fertility Center, about 15% of couples are affected by infertility. A third of the time, it has to do with the man's sperm; another third, it's the woman's eggs or other conditions, like endometriosis; and the last third is a combination of factors from both the man and the woman. IVF can also help with irreversible procedures like tubal ligation and vasectomy.

Barring certain factors, like the age of the woman's eggs (42 is generally considered the cutoff age) or genetic conditions that can cause pregnancy loss, Dr. Kan says that the majority of IVFs are successful -- up to 70% for those that continue with at least a couple of cycles, although Cassel got pregnant on the first try. Often, the limiting factor is the cost, which can be up to $15,000 per cycle without insurance.

Although IVF has been around since 1978, when the first in vitro baby was born, many of the finer points are still being worked out. Chief among those is the high risk for multiple pregnancies. "Really, the art form is trying to balance the amount of embryos put back in to get the pregnancy but not the multiples," says Dr. Kan in his calm, measured doctor voice. But really, there's no way to know how many embryos will stick to the uterus: We've all heard the stories of IVF quadruplets, quintuplets and more in the news often enough, but one baby is generally the safest, and where the expertise of someone like Dr. Kan is especially useful. "At the same time, however, if someone's been trying for five years and they're older, then they would be ecstatic to have multiples because they could have them all at once."

It can be a touchy subject. And there are more questions: The ethics about leftover embryos is a particularly controversial topic. But for women like Cassel who were once called infertile, IVF is the answer they never thought would come.

Photo by ralph palumbo Jacqueline Owen, Amy Kaplan and Delacey Anderson

SURROGACY: THE OTHER WOMAN

Delacey Anderson's 25th birthday was a chilly day on the first day of April. She was here, at a playground, with a demeanor that looked equal parts shy and guarded, her short-sleeved black dress, long blonde hair and trailing blonde-headed daughter the stuff California ads are made of.

Jacqueline Owen, quiet and looking as if she wants to fade into the choppy sea behind her, is shy too, though appearing a bit more mature, in her 30s perhaps. The two women would probably never meet but for the fact that they are both surrogate mothers working with Orange County-based West Coast Surrogacy.

Anderson and Owen are gestational surrogates, meaning that they carry the fertilized embryo of the intended parents. Their wombs are, in a sense, borrowed from women who are unable to carry their own children for a variety of reasons that could include multiple miscarriages, cancer, a hysterectomy, or more rare conditions such as lupus.

It's not a job for everybody, this uterus rental. Surrogates at West Coast Surrogacy, besides already having become mothers themselves, must possess a certain generosity of spirit, a deep respect for life. They must have carried children before to know how devastating it would feel if they were never able to do it. They must want to help. "I wanted mothers that weren't able to have their own children experience the joys that I've had with mine," says Owen, who has twice been a surrogate. "There's no other feeling like it in the world."

And she's right: Carrying a child for nine months, watching it take on a life of its own at birth, and then handing it over to its parents is a series of acts that strikes many as unbelievably charitable, and others as utterly incomprehensible. Adverse reactions and negative responses come with the territory, along with distrust about the surrogate's motivations and concerns for her health.

"Surrogates get a lot of feedback that's not always positive," says Amy Kaplan, founder of West Coast Surrogacy. "Some people feel that the person carrying the baby is the mother -- they think that you're actually giving up a baby." Anderson mentions that she has been surprised by how many negative reactions she's received, how many people have reacted with a look that says, "How could you do that?"

But, at least for Owen, surrogacy isn't so much about giving something up as it is about gaining a unique and profound relationship with a family you've helped build, a void you've helped fill. "It's a really positive experience," she says. "I don't feel a loss. I've formed a really strong bond and a friendship that will never go away."

There's also the undeniable pull of genetics, which Kaplan, a surrogate mother herself, feels makes surrogacy such a successful alternative for women unable to carry their own children. "Toward the end of the pregnancy, I had this really strong urge that these children needed to get back to their [biological] parents," she says. "It just became overwhelming."

So who are these women that carry other people's children? According to Kaplan, they are often mothers who tell stories about how motherhood changed their lives. They enjoy being pregnant, but don't necessarily want to have more kids of their own; simply, they want to help someone else experience the feeling of having a baby.

And at a profit of anywhere from $30,000-$40,000 for lending her womb, the money can certainly help, though if money is their only motivation, it's not a good fit, says Kaplan. In many cases, surrogate mothers can also look forward to a relationship with the couple and with the child, though that decision is entirely at the discretion of the biological parents.

"The women who are surrogates are giving, generous women," says Kaplan. "But the women who can have another woman carry their baby are extraordinary."

Photo by ralph palumbo Guiselle Scott with her daughter, Darcelle Marie

ADOPTION AND FOSTER CARE: YOU ARE MY CHILD

That's exactly what happened to me. My number one fear, that's exactly what happened."

That's Guiselle Scott, 37 years old. Title: Foster/Adoptive Mother.

She's pushing her daughter around the park in a stroller, like many mothers on a warm spring day. She stops; the canvas top comes down, and the sunlight reflects off one-year-old Darcelle Marie's golden hair. As the infant reaches her pale, chubby arms up, Scott instinctively lifts her, her daughter's arms curling around her neck.

It's possible that they're related, but not likely.

Dark-haired, with intelligent brown eyes and an animated manner, Scott is not, in fact, Darcelle Marie's biological mother, but her adoptive mother. It's a distinction of semantics, really, if you ask Scott, though some might disagree. But to hear her story, to see the torment in her eyes when she speaks of her first foster son being taken back by his biological family, says otherwise. It was her worst nightmare, her number one fear, and it came true. So she went back and did it again. Only this time, Darcelle Marie was for real.

Darcelle Marie used to be one of the 3,000 children in Orange County who needed a home, according to Roylyn Burton, a community program specialist for County of Orange Social Services Agency. For the most part, kids end up being put on the list for a foster home or up for adoption due to neglect, though physical, emotional and sexual abuse are also fairly common.

These children are described as being "in the system" -- a term usually associated with the endless bureaucracy and frustration of courts and jails; sadly, these kids' stories aren't much different -- they, too, are often caught up in long, drawn-out battles for custody or worse, simply overlooked. It can't be easy for Burton, I imagine, to see over and over this dark side of humanity, so far removed from the privileged lives our sunny corner of the world so prides itself on. But then, there are women like Scott.

"My husband and I tried to have our own family and couldn't," says Scott. A string of attempts with in vitro fertilization followed, but cost soon became an issue. "That wasn't the way that was meant for us," she says. If there weren't people like her and her husband, she continues, there wouldn't be places for these forgotten children, the ones that are often damaged, sometimes spared and mostly good kids who were dealt a bad hand. Hers is a destiny-like take on a very complicated and socially difficult issue, one in which the children are the only victims.

For Scott and Darcelle Marie, however, this is a happy ending. "I am lucky she has me," she says. "It's not the other way around. People think she's so lucky she has us, but I never look at it that way. She's the reason why I do the things I do in my life." And the question of biology? It doesn't come up. Adoption is an arrangement with an implied permanence, a (legal) premise of "this is my child." To a lesser extent, so is fostering, though children do go back to their biological families if and when certain court-ordered conditions are fulfilled.

Because of the delicate nature of adoption and fostering, the programs offered by County of Orange Social Services Agency are an invaluable resource to new parents. Unlike international and private adoption, every family that takes in a child is given access to an enormous range of free services -- everything from classes on parenting skills to programs like Bridge Builders that teach families how to form attachments and how to answer tough but inevitable questions their child will have about their birth parents. Scott has started teaching some of the classes herself, in both English and Spanish, sharing her story, her opportunity and her rewards, with others.

"I tell people I was one of them -- I sat in that chair and had the same fears and the same questions," she says. "But nothing is as dark or as bright as it's made out to be."





FAMILY OF FIVE: AN UPDATE

I imagine that, for Chris and Lori Coble, when people walk by them on the street, or look them dead in the eye at the grocery store checkout, asking if plastic is okay, that they might feel like just another Orange County couple. But then they would pause from this momentary state of blissful normality and return to their reality: That their three young children were taken from them in a big-rig accident one year ago on May the Fourth, a day that, for them, will forever remain as a capital-lettered time stamp among 364 other ordinary days. I imagine that this is how they would feel.

Though really, I have no idea. I have no idea what it would be like to have three beings born from your own body taken from you in an instant. Life, it seems, is not only unfair; it is cruel. Wicked and without remorse.

And then, a little bit ironic, as if the world suddenly wakes up and realizes just how out of balance it is, and tries in vain to correct itself.

This time, the incongruous olive branch will come in the form of triplets for the Coble family, due this month. And though it might seem a miracle of equilibrium, there was also the element of science, the practice of IVF, that resulted in such perfect symmetry. Still, it is a chapter ripped from the "courage" files; a bittersweet ending with at least the appearance of a resolution.

Chris and Lori Coble have now become involved with the Truck Safety Coalition (www.trucksafety.org), a national organization devoted to improving safety on the road. The purchase of a $10 set of Coble Kids Memorial stickers (intended for a vehicle's back window) will be forwarded entirely to the organization. Send funds to Lauren McCroskey, 29 Tarleton Lane, Ladera Ranch, CA 92694, or e-mail coblefamilysticker@yahoo.com for more information.

FOR MORE INFORMATION Fertility Services Newport Fertility Center, 20072 SW Birch St., Suite 230, Newport Beach, (949) 222-1290; www.newportfertility.com Surrogacy West Coast Surrogacy, 23411 Aliso Viejo Pkwy., Suite K-29, (949) 362-8200; www.westcoastsurrogacy.com Adoption and Foster Care County of Orange Social Services Agency, 744 N. Eckhoff, Orange, (714) 704-8704; www.oc4kids.com