Carla and Marc Duffy have been reading the recent flurry of articles about cryopreserved embryos with curiosity --and no small measure of frustration. The Duffy’s, busy parents of daughters 3 1/2 and 1 1/2, decided to donate their eight frozen embryos shortly after their second daughter’s birth.

For them, the decision was the easy part. The hard part has been finding a medical center that wants them.

Carla describes her frustration. “It feels like a 'don’t ask, don’t tell' kind of thing to us. Supposedly the medical centers want embryos for research, but we have yet to figure out how to donate them.”

But it was not so easy. Carla’s efforts began with a phone call to a counselor that she knew at one of the local fertility clinics. “I told her that I wanted to donate our embryos, [the counselor] said she’d check with the director of the clinic and she called back an hour later to say that they would love to have them. That was the last that I heard from that clinic. I phoned there several times and the director never returned my calls.”

It gets worse. When the first center failed to return her calls, Carla made another inquiry. She called one of the major local medical centers and again explained that she had embryos to donate. “The woman that I spoke with told me that what I was asking was both illegal and immoral. I was so embarrassed! No wonder the people at the first clinic hadn’t phoned me back.”

As Carla describes it, she “freaked” after that second phone call. Together with Marc, she decided to put plans for the embryos on hold and to focus on their young children. After all, it was the Duffy’s long journey to parenthood and the remarkable circumstances of their daughters’ births that taught them the limitations and the extraordinary powers of modern medicine.

The Mysteries of Reproduction

Like most infertile couples, Carla and Marc Duffy assumed that they would have children with ease. They were young and healthy and had no reason to anticipate fertility problems. Even when they did not conceive easily, they remained hopeful, assuming that medical intervention would work. Yet several years of tests and treatments later, they found themselves in an IVF program. Enter the eight frozen embryos.

To their delight, the Duffy’s first IVF cycle worked.They were pregnant with twins! For five joyous months, they celebrated their good fortune, counting themselves among the lucky ones for whom treatment had worked. Then, at 22 weeks, everything changed. Carla went into labor and delivered the Duffy’s first-born children.
Stillborn.

Devastated by the loss of their twins, Carla and Marc chose to take some time to grieve before moving returning for what is known as a “frozen embryo transfer.” Veterans of years of infertility, it never occurred to them that they could actually become pregnant when they weren’t trying. But that is what happened: to their surprise and delight the Duffy’s were again expecting. This time it was a singleton. Several joyous weeks followed, yet this pregnancy also was destined to end in loss. Carla had a miscarriage at 13 weeks. The Duffy’s later learned that the baby they had lost had trisomy 22, a chromosomal abnormality “incompatible with life.”

And then came their first daughter. To Marc and Carla’s great surprise, they conceived on their own a second time. This pregnancy progressed uneventfully until week 24 when Carla became ill and was diagnosed with HELLP syndrome, a serious pregnancy complication, potentially life threatening to the mother. Immediately hospitalized, Carla remained in bed for three weeks. During that time, the Duffy’s learned that it was not only Carla’s health that was in jeopardy: their unborn child was experiencing intrauterine growth restriction. At 27 weeks, the baby was at such risk that the physicians felt that there was no choice but to deliver her by caesarean section. April 9, 1998, the Duffy’s first daughter entered the world at 14 1/2 ounces.

The weeks and months that followed their daughter’s birth were a long, tense time for Carla and Marc. Days were spent at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Evenings were spent at home, hoping that the phone would not ring with bad news. Yet throughout the ordeal, both Carla and Marc remained optimistic. Looking back, both feel that in large measure that optimism came from the excellent care that their daughter was receiving at the hospital. The Duffy’s have never forgotten the people who cared for their daughter nor the institution that helped her survive. It is their abiding gratitude that makes the Duffy’s so determined to give their embryos to medical science. In no uncertain terms, medical science saved their older daughter’s life and her parents will never forget that.

Nor will they forget what medical science did for their second daughter -- and for Carla -- the second time around. Yes, there was another incredibly challenging, incredibly frightening pregnancy, conceived spontaneously and interrupted at 24 weeks. It was at that point that Carla got sick. Very, very sick this time. So sick, indeed, that the doctors told her that they would have to deliver the baby early, once again at 27 weeks. The youngest Duffy was a bruiser, weighing in at a hefty one pound, eleven ounces. But although she was a good deal larger than her older sister, she was not as robust. Her early days, weeks, and months were truly a period of day to day, sometimes hour to hour, life and death concerns. Both Carla and Marc felt much more worried and more stressed than they did during their older daughter’s earliest days and weeks. Looking back, they feel that their anxiety was so high in part because their baby’s condition was critical, but also, because they had already been through so much the first time around. Theirs was what psychologists call a “post traumatic stress reaction.” But unlike most who suffer post traumatic stress, the Duffy’s were also in the middle of present traumatic stress.
Big time.

Like her older sister, the Duffy’s younger daughter was a fighter. As time passed it became increasingly clear that she would survive. After three and one half months, all the Duffy’s were finally home...

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