Kathleen McDaniel was tired of waiting for “Mr. Right.” “My dream was to be married and have a family,” the 45-year-old Gig Harbor physician’s assistant says. “But I was butting my head up against a brick wall in the dating world.”

Most of the men her age that she met already had children from a previous marriage, and didn’t want more.

She checked into adoption, but as a single woman, she says, she didn’t see much hope of being able to adopt an American infant.

“Birth mothers prefer couples,” she says.

McDaniel talked with her pastor, who assured her that “if God wants you to have a family, doors will open.”

Then she received an e-mail from an adoption Web site touting the advantages of a different kind of adoption.

She could, the e-mail explained, be implanted with frozen embryos donated by couples who had undergone fertility treatments and who felt their families were complete. Their leftover embryos could become her children.

At first, McDaniel dismissed the e-mail.

“I thought that it didn’t apply to me,” says McDaniel.

But then she re-read the message. She started researching the subject.

She had never before considered assisted reproduction – such as sperm donation – primarily because her age would diminish her chances of success. She also worried about the fact that, with sperm donation, her child might have “30 other half-brothers and half-sisters.” She had been focused on international adoption at the time she received the e-mail.

But she warmed to the concept of embryo donation: “I appreciated the idea of being able to use something and give it life. That was a great inspiration.” McDaniel began talking to friends and colleagues in the medical world. A physician friend’s husband – also a physician – knew a clinic that could help.

After consultations with doctors at the Northwest Center for Reproductive Sciences in Kirkland, McDaniel got the green light to proceed.

As a runner, she was in good physical condition. Her age was not a big factor, doctors told her.

The age of the woman whose egg was used to make the donated embryo was much more important, doctors said. McDaniel’s egg donor was under age 30.

On Nov. 12, the embryo transfer was completed. The procedure cost around $6,000.

After the transfer, McDaniel had to lay on her back for 30 minutes. As she waited, someone showed her photographs of the embryos just days after fertilization. The pictures, greatly magnified, reveal only a clump of cells, with nothing to hint at the human potential locked within.

“I was elated,” McDaniel says. “I had these little embryos in me. I called them my little pea pods. And I started crying.”

McDaniel soon discovered she was pregnant with twins – a boy and a girl. They’re due in July.

She is aware that some people might not approve of the path to parenthood that she has chosen. But she says she decided to speak publicly about her experience because she wants to educate other women yearning to give birth about the possibilities that reproductive technology can provide. She also wants couples with frozen embryos to know about the need for donors.

“I want to be a conduit of information for other people,” she says. “I hope it can help somebody else on their journey.”

HOW IT WORKS

The science that promises to grant McDaniel her lifelong wish has been developing since the 1980s, when the first successful transfers of embryos from one woman to another were completed.

Assisted reproduction begins when a woman takes additional hormones that cause her to produce an abundance of eggs. The eggs are removed from her ovaries, then united with sperm in the laboratory, through a process known as in vitro fertilization. IVF helps couples who are otherwise unable to conceive.

Fertilized eggs are allowed to develop to a certain point, then are either immediately implanted into a woman, or frozen for the future.

“The embryos tell us a story,” says Dr. Michael Opsahl, the Kirkland physician who worked with McDaniel. “We can see down to the cellular level. We measure about 20 different variables to help us grade the embryos.”

Doctors usually implant no more than two or three embryos, to avoid creating risky multiple pregnancies.

That means that there often are embryos left over.

A 2003 report in the journal Fertility and Sterility estimated that there were 400,000 embryos frozen in the United States.

Experts aren’t sure how common embryo donation is, says Barbara Collura, executive director of Resolve, a national association that offers support and information for infertility. That’s because no major organization in the reproductive medicine field collects data on the procedure, she says.

Resolve has launched a public awareness campaign, funded by the federal Department of Health and Human Services. As part of the campaign, Resolve recently surveyed 800 Seattle residents. The survey revealed that less than half of Seattle residents were aware of embryo donation as a family-building option. But of those who had heard of it, 72 percent viewed it favorably.

EMOTIONAL CONCERNS

The issue of what happens to those frozen embryos has spurred a debate that touches on deep emotions and religious beliefs.

Most couples who undergo IVF plan to use their frozen embryos for future pregnancies. But because doctors want a large pool of good quality embryos to choose from, IVF often produces more embryos than a couple can use.

Couples might decide they don’t want more children. A marriage can dissolve, or a spouse might die.

Then the creators of the frozen embryos must decide whether to pay the annual costs to keep them frozen, allow the embryos to be used for scientific research, discard the embryos or donate them to someone else who’s trying to become pregnant.

Resolve points out that deciding to donate is a complex issue.

“Most patients don’t go into IVF with the idea of throwing out embryos,” says Opsahl. “On an emotional level, they think of them as potential babies.”

But deciding to allow someone else to have babies that bear your genes can be hard. Resolve recommends psychological counseling to help donors through the decision.

There’s no guarantee that an implanted embryo will grow into a healthy pregnancy. Resolve quotes statistics that indicate less than a third of frozen embryo transfers in 2006 resulted in live births.

LEGAL ISSUES

There are two types of embryo donation. It can be anonymous. Or it can be open, in which the donors and recipients agree to share information about each other. Some families even agree in advance to introduce their biologically related children to each other.

McDaniel chose anonymity. Although she knows some basic facts about her embryo donors – their height and weight, education levels, ethnicity and basic medical history – she doesn’t know their names and they don’t know hers.

“They signed ownership of the embryos to the clinic,” she says. “I signed that they are now mine.”

The legal issues surrounding embryo donation are still evolving.

Washington is one of only a handful of states that have passed laws governing assisted reproduction. Statutes adopted in 2002 spell out that a donor is not the parent of a child conceived through assisted reproduction. Raegen Rasnic, a partner in the Seattle law firm Skellenger Bender, says it’s important that statutes also specify that the laws apply to donated embryos, as well as sperm and eggs. “That makes Washington’s law a little clearer” than some other states with similar statutes, says Rasnic, who spoke on the issue during a recent Resolve-sponsored workshop.

Rasnic says she is not aware of any court cases in Washington in which embryo donors have tried to assert custody rights after their donated embryos produced children for others.

Still, she says, her “bedrock advice” for couples interested in becoming donors or recipients of embryos is to draft a written agreement that spells out the intentions on both sides. In cases of anonymous donation, donors would most likely sign away their rights to the embryos to the reproductive clinic.

“I think this is an incredibly encouraging family building option,” Rasnic says. “But I would always encourage people to have enough information.”

BECOMING A MOM

While she prepares for birth, McDaniel is also busy preparing her house, located on a suburban cul-de-sac that looks as if it were custom designed for raising kids. She plans to decorate the nursery with a gender-neutral Dr. Seuss theme. Among the stacks of baby clothes she’s collecting – both new and hand-me-downs from relatives – is a set of matching onesies, labeled Thing 1 and Thing 2. The mischievous characters are from the Seuss story, “The Cat in the Hat.”

McDaniel has survived the shock and the excitement that come from learning you are carrying twins. And she’s also faced down morning sickness. She knows she’ll have help from family and friends when the babies come.

So she feels she’s ready for anything – especially motherhood.

“I’m like – bring it on,” she says.

Debbie Cafazzo: 253-597-8635

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