COUNTYWIDE : Infertility Support TEAM Offers Help

Camarillo resident Antonia Inman, 31, is without child.

She is also a marketing manager at a subsidiary of IBM Corp. and the wife of an assistant district attorney for Ventura County.

But Inman’s childlessness has been one of the defining factors of her life since she and her husband began trying to have a baby 3 1/2 years ago, she said.

“Infertility affects everything,” Inman said, adding that wanting children has put stress on both her marriage and her career.

“Your life revolves around your hormones,” she said. “Every month is like a roller-coaster ride” of emotions, with hopes that run high before ovulation turning into sadness when conception doesn’t occur.

About a year and a half ago, Inman attended her first meeting of Together Expecting a Miracle, or TEAM, Ventura County’s only ongoing support group for men and women suffering from infertility.

“It was the first time I had been in a room of other people who understood what I was going through,” Inman said.

TEAM, which meets monthly in a Ventura church, was founded eight years ago by Oxnard resident Arlene Frietze. Men and women who attend the meetings hear speakers--therapists, medical professionals and adoption specialists--and share information and encouragement on their efforts to conceive or adopt.

Except for the newest members, all of the couples who have attended TEAM eventually have had babies or adopted or both, Frietze said, adding that she and her husband adopted twins four years ago.

Inman said that, when she miscarried twins a year ago and took five weeks off work, “the support group really stepped in.” TEAM members “made sure someone was having lunch with me.”

Support from the group also helped Inman decide two months ago, after suffering three more miscarriages, to adopt. Her husband agreed with her.

“That was the beginning of the end of the dream,” she said.

For information on TEAM, call 485-4677 or 647-1417.