Science that spawned ‘Octomom’ can’t always deliver

Once hailed as miraculous, infertility treatments now seem routine.

The first “test tube baby” has grown up to be a 33-year-old woman with a preschooler of her own. Lesbians have babies all the time. Society seems bored by Octomom and her eight-baby spectacle. A 61-year-old woman gave birth to her own grandson. A 72-year-old grandmother delivered twins. A bearded transgendered man has given birth twice. Science has given babies to millions of folks.

But not to Chris and Patience Bertana of Antioch, who have spent a decade and tens of thousands of dollars riding an emotional infertility roller coaster.

The couple met as kids in the marching band at Round Lake High School and started dating when Chris was a junior and Patience a freshman.

“We went to four homecomings together,” says Chris, now 38.

“And four proms,” adds Patience, 36. “And we have the big, ridiculous hair photographs to prove it.”

They married in 1996 and knew they wanted to have kids someday.

“Six months before we got married, he quit a very lucrative job to go work with kids,” says Patience, recalling Chris’ jobs with suburban YMCAs. A special-education teacher at a Mundelein middle school, Patience says she loves working with children. Chris coaches the Blue Devils Swim Club and the varsity boys swim team at Warren Township High School in Gurnee.

At the dawn of the new millennium, Chris and Patience were having difficulties conceiving a child, as do more than one in 10 couples. They started infertility treatments and figured they’d have some funny stories to tell their kids someday.

“I was literally in the doctor’s office giving my sample on Sept. 11, 2001,” Chris remembers. “I could hear through the speakers in the other room when the towers collapsed.”

Infertility and the treatments for it became more and more of their lives. Comparing themselves to gamblers, they’d view each small success as a sign to invest more money and time,

“We have a whole new respect for what a true miracle a pregnancy is,” Patience says. “There’s more to it than just a bottle of red wine.”

As friends and relatives started families, Chris and Patience embarked on a grueling, decade-long process that built hopes and delivered heartache and pain.

They’d wake at 3:30 in the morning so they could leave their Antioch home, drive to an infertility clinic in Niles and be back in Mundelein in time for Patience’s job at school.