Childless Couple Try Pioneering Technique

Jeanie Gruetzemacher was clearly pleased that she and her husband were medical pioneers.

“We hope so,” she said as she lay recuperating in a hospital bed in Garden Grove. “We hope our experience will provide hope for other couples who haven’t been able to have a baby.”

Her husband, Army Col. Ed Gruetzemacher, reached and grasped her hand as he sat in a chair by her bed at the UC Irvine Center for Reproductive Health.

The Gruetzemachers were one of the first two couples in the nation to take part in a new procedure to help infertile males become fathers. Ed Greutzemacher was born without a vas deferens, a duct that carries sperm.

“I’ve known about it since I was in my 20s, and I thought I’d never be able to have a child,” he said. “This new procedure is providing us hope.”

It is the couple’s second try with the new procedure. Their first attempt in August resulted in what was called a “miracle pregnancy.” But Jeanie Gruetzemacher suffered a miscarriage.

“It’s something that can happen with any pregnancy,” she said. So the couple came to Orange County for a repeat of the fertility operations.

“I’ll know if I’m pregnant again by March 11,” she said.

The couple are from Jefferson City, Mo. Jeanie Gruetzemacher, 37, works as an administrative assistant to a state representative from St. Louis. Ed Gruetzemacher, 42, is the aviation officer for Missouri’s Army National Guard.

It is the second marriage for both. Neither had a child by their previous marriage. Ed Gruetzemacher said he believed it was medically impossible for him.

“Even my doctor in St. Louis, Dr. (Sherman) Silber, told me about four years ago that there was no hope for me,” he said.

But Silber, a male fertility expert working out of St. Luke’s Hospital in St. Louis, last year wrote Gruetzemacher that new hope had been found. Silber, working with Dr. Ricardo Asch of the UC Irvine Center for Reproductive Health, had pioneered a new procedure.

Under the care of Asch and Silber, the Gruetzemachers and a couple from Colorado underwent the surgeries. The Colorado mother is expected to deliver in May.

Jeanie Gruetzemacher said she was disappointed by the miscarriage but grateful that Asch and Silber allowed her to try again.

The Gruetzemachers underwent virtually simultaneous minor operations at the Garden Grove center on Wednesday. The doctors removed eggs from Jeanie Gruetzemacher’s ovaries at 1:30 p.m. At 2:30 p.m., the doctors surgically extracted sperm from Ed Gruetzemacher. Sperm and eggs were united in a test tube, and about 48 hours later the fertilized eggs were placed in Jeanie Gruetzemacher’s Fallopian tubes.

“This is a miracle,” she said.

“We don’t think it would make or break our marriage, but we both look forward to having children,” he said. “I had all but resolved myself, since my 20s, that I could never have them.”

Her husband, Jeanie said, is “Ed Gruetzemacher III. And even if I don’t have a son, I’d like a child to carry on the Gruetzemacher name.”