Friend bears child for cancer patient
The Associated Press  May 6, 2003

VANCOUVER, Wash.--When Molly Tatarka met Sheri Townsend more than 20 years ago, they were opponents in a dramatic basketball game.

They eventually became teammates and friends. In the past year, they became teammates in a way nobody could have imagined: Sheri gave birth to Molly's baby.

Giovanni Rigutto was born Jan. 31 at Southwest Washington Medical Center. He was every bit the child of Tatarka and her husband, Alessandro Rigutto, even though Townsend was the one giving birth.

After learning that Tatarka had uterine cancer, Townsend volunteered to carry the baby through a process called gestational surrogacy. The baby developed in her womb, from eggs and sperm provided by Tatarka and Rigutto.

Although Sheri Townsend has no genetic link to the baby, Tatarka said she sees something of her friend in Giovanni.

"He is such a good baby, and that has a lot to do with Sheri's disposition," Tatarka said recently of her son, now 3 months old. Tatarka and her family live in Anchorage, where she is an Air Force major at Elmendorf Air Force Base.

"There is a lot of emotion in this," Sheri said as she and her husband, Ken, sat in their Salmon Creek home. She is a nurse in the surgical unit at Providence Centralia Hospital.

"My head and intellect are perfectly OK with it. And then there are those emotions," Townsend said, trying to fight back tears.

"But I realize an amazing thing: I'm able to give Molly and Sandro the opportunity to become parents. Parenting is one of the toughest things you can do, but one of the nicest things," Townsend said.

That's what Tatarka and Rigutto had in mind three years ago when they were married.

"We basically wanted kids right away," Tatarka said.

To speed up the process, she started taking fertility pills. After a month, Tatarka wound up with what she called "massive headaches."

"I didn't know I had cancer until they did some biopsies. If we weren't going through the process of trying to get pregnant, I don't know how they would have found the cancer," she said.

The surrogacy idea came about when Molly e-mailed Sheri, telling her about the possibility of cancer.

In response, Sheri said, "I told Molly that I knew she was going through a hard time, and to keep me in mind as a surrogate."

Several women volunteered, but Sheri, who turned 37 in April, seemed the best bet.

"Sheri was the perfect candidate. The only thing against us was my age when the eggs were retrieved," said Tatarka, who turned 37 in March.

To prepare her body for surrogacy, a year ago Townsend started making trips to Seattle for treatment at Virginia Mason Hospital's Center for Fertility and Reproductive Endocrinology.

Five of Tatarka's eggs were fertilized with Rigutto's sperm, then frozen; doctors were able to thaw four of them for transfer. All were transplanted into Townsend's uterus on May 31.

Both couples hired their own lawyers to make sure everything went by the numbers. Legal fees and counseling were just some of the costs that pushed the price tag to about $25,000.

"We don't want to stop with one child, but there is no way we could afford that again. We probably will go with adoption," Tatarka said. "No way we could have done this without (financial) help from Sandro's parents."

Sheri said she doesn't regret the experience.

"I would do it one time," she said. "If I knew then what I know now, I would do it differently. But I would not do it a second time."

After a very emotional year, she and Molly are still friends, Sheri said.

"We are. And as time goes by, we will be closer than ever," the Vancouver mother said. "This was most definitely the right thing to do."