Parents Celebrate at Hoag’s Family Reunion : Family: Newport hospital’s picnic-style reception gives couples a chance to reacquaint themselves with fertility specialists who helped them have babies.

Cheryl and Hal Henderson were about to give up their dream of starting a family.

For six years, they were bumped from doctor to doctor, subjected to dozens of tests and given numerous medications. Cheryl underwent intrauterine insemination several times. Nothing worked.

“We tried everything and they just kept telling us there was nothing wrong,” Cheryl Henderson said. “And since there was nothing medically wrong with either one of us, there was no real solution.”

In their last-ditch effort to have a child, the San Clemente couple went to fertility services at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach and 18 months later, Cheryl became pregnant. Matthew was born in the spring of 1992.

“Matt means gift from God,” Cheryl, 42, said Saturday as she and her husband and their son celebrated with about 100 other families who attended Hoag’s annual family reunion. “We really think of him as a gift.”

The picnic-style reception--with clowns, games and other family activities--gave parents a chance to reacquaint themselves with those who helped them. They lined up to have their children pose for a picture with Dr. Larry Werlin, the fertility specialist who treats all the patients at the clinic.

“He is kind of like Santa Claus around here,” hospital spokeswoman Maureen Mazzatenta said as the growing line of parents wrapped around the hospital parking lot where the picnic was held.

About 320 new couples each year attempt to get pregnant with the help of Werlin, hospital officials said. But Werlin said there is no way to determine the success rate of those patients. Once they’re pregnant, the mothers-to-be go to their own doctors and don’t return to Hoag.

Newport Beach resident Candice Schnapp said she and her husband tried for a year to have a baby before going to Hoag in 1988.

“We never found out what the problem was,” she said. “Even though I only had one Fallopian tube and one ovary, they kept saying that shouldn’t stop me from conceiving.”

She went through the usual dose of medication, attempts at insemination and numerous tests. Schnapp quickly became pregnant, but Werlin soon discovered the baby didn’t develop a heartbeat.

“I’ll never forget it,” she said. “When I went in for surgery, he just rubbed my feet telling me in a soft voice exactly what was going to happen. And as they wheeled me in, he held my hand.”

A few years later, in 1991, Schnapp was pregnant again. This time there were no complications, and her daughter, Monica, was born in August, 1992.

“We just keep waiting for our big break,” she said. “I saw each month as a new opportunity, not as failure.”