The Family Doctor : Surrogacy Specialist Makes Intrepid Couples Into Parents, With a Little Help

When Dr. Michael Feinman headed west from New York in 1991 to set up practice in California, the last field he planned to specialize in was surrogacy.

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The nation was caught up in an emotional debate over the tangled ethics of parenthood, and he wanted nothing to do with it.

Nearly five years later, Feinman, the only full-time Ventura County doctor who provides surrogacy services, draws childless couples from around the nation and the world who seek his help in creating families.

“I came from New York not expecting to do this, in fact being against surrogacy because of the Mary Beth Whitehead case,” said Feinman, referring to the highly publicized trial in which a contracted surrogate mother sued to keep the child she was carrying. “I had no idea this would become my niche.”

Then he met William Handel, who founded the Center for Surrogate Parenting and Egg Donation Inc. in Beverly Hills. The 15-year-old agency not only screens would-be surrogates and parents, but provides a spectrum of legal, psychological and support services.

“Bill urged me to open up the door,” Feinman said.

Since Feinman began using surrogates in his Westlake Village office two years ago, he and his staff have helped 14 couples become parents. His success rate is 50% with women under 40 who have normal ovaries, a figure that stands up to audit by the accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP.

During the past two years, Feinman said he has never had a problem with a surrogate who changed her mind and wanted to keep the child she carried, and he knows why.

First, he said, he works closely with the Center for Surrogate Parenting, and second, he accepts only certain types of surrogates and couples.

“I never work with a surrogate who hasn’t had children of her own,” he said. “You could bring me your twin sister and if she hadn’t already had children, I wouldn’t work with her. Who wants to have their first birth end by giving up a baby?”

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It could be argued that a childless surrogate could not really provide “informed consent,” not knowing firsthand what pregnancy would be like, he said.

“Also, the surrogate needs to have some concern for the couple and not be motivated purely by money,” he said. “It just isn’t enough.”

Feinman studied obstetrics and gynecology, graduating from the UCLA medical school in 1980. He later moved into reproductive endocrinology and directed the in-vitro fertilization program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx before relocating in 1991.

As a reproductive endocrinologist, Feinman treats hormonal imbalances leading to problems that include infertility. He also treats men and women with more traditional infertility or hormonal problems.

But the surrogacy services are among the most fulfilling work he does. In his Westlake Village office, the friendly, mustachioed, 40-year-old father of two boys helps couples become parents.

“Sometimes I feel so guilty being so blessed with my own kids and taking care of these poor people who have such problems having children,” said Feinman, who lives with his sons and his wife, Robyn, in Agoura Hills.

A little more than one month ago, Feinman helped a New York couple realize their dream. But the story of the couple’s quest for children started years before.

When Elizabeth first miscarried, her baby was four months along, old enough to suck his thumb in the womb but not old enough to survive on his own.

Then there was a second miscarriage, which came much earlier in the pregnancy but brought no less heartache.

She knew her uterus had a congenital malformation and feared that, should she conceive again, the pregnancy might last long enough to produce a viable baby, but one that might be born profoundly premature.

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Because surrogacy is illegal in New York, Elizabeth’s doctor sent them to the center in Beverly Hills, which works with 12 fertility specialists in Southern California. She and her husband, who asked that their real names not be used, decided to work with Feinman. With his help, they used Elizabeth’s eggs, her husband’s sperm and a Simi Valley woman’s uterus to create their family.

“We had to realize that you have to get past wanting to get pregnant and change your focus from getting pregnant to having a family,” said Elizabeth. “We interviewed many physicians, but Dr. Feinman understood our problems and choices.”

Through the center, they found Jodi, a 31-year-old single mother of one from Simi Valley. Last month, she gave birth to Elizabeth’s son, Jonathan, at Westlake Hospital.

Jodi said she did it for love.

“It figures out to be about 20 cents an hour,” she said of her $10,000 fee. “But I didn’t do it for the money. I love my daughter so much. I just couldn’t imagine someone having to go through life without having children.”

Her eyes welled up as she talked about the moment when Elizabeth and her husband saw their son for the first time.

“The joy was so overwhelming for me,” Jodi said. “I would do it again for them.”

In the Simi Valley law office where she works as an assistant, she pulled out her brag book with pictures of her 3-year-old daughter Anna, Jonathan as a newborn and at 1 month old, and a shot of her giving encouragement to Elizabeth in the delivery room.

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“For a while there, it looked like she was going to faint,” Jodi said. “I had to grab her and tell her, ‘Breathe, breathe.’ And that was right before the baby was born.”

Jodi said she and the other surrogates in a support group she attends at the Center for Surrogate Parenting have three things in common: “I love children, I have easy pregnancies and I wanted another couple to be able to experience that joy.”

Feinman used fertility drugs to stimulate Elizabeth’s system to produce extra eggs for the transfer. For Jodi, he used other drugs to first shut down her system to coordinate with Elizabeth’s cycle. Then, he followed with a regimen of hormone injections to mimic a natural cycle and build up her uterus to be receptive to the egg.

When Elizabeth’s eggs were ready, Feinman used ultrasound to guide him as he extracted several eggs from her ovaries. The eggs were fertilized in his laboratory.

“We waited three days so we could pick out the best ones,” Feinman said. Then, those eggs were implanted into Jodi’s uterus.

The first time, the procedure failed. But on the second try, they had a pregnancy. Nine months later at Westlake Medical Center in Westlake Village, Jodi gave birth to an 8-pound, 12-ounce boy.

“He’s absolutely beautiful,” Elizabeth said by telephone from New York. “There is no way I could have carried a baby like this to term. Jodi gave so much of herself.”

The process can also be done with embryos frozen in another part of the state, nation or world and flown to Feinman’s office, where he implants them in a surrogate, Feinman said.

“We just learned we have a pregnancy with a California surrogate for another New York couple,” he said.

There are four types of surrogacy, but Feinman participates in three. In gestational surrogacy, couples like Elizabeth and her husband can produce viable embryos but cannot carry a pregnancy. The child is their genetic child--carried in another woman’s uterus.

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The second and third type of surrogacy involve egg donation. In one, an egg is taken from a donor, fertilized with the husband’s sperm and implanted in the wife through in-vitro fertilization. A woman who opts for that type of egg donation has a working uterus but may be too old to conceive or have a genetic condition she fears passing along.

Or an egg can be taken from a donor and implanted in a third woman.

In the fourth type of surrogacy, known in the field as traditional surrogacy, the woman who donates the egg, the biological mother, also carries the baby. But she signs a contract to give up the child to the biological father and his wife.

That is the only type of surrogacy in which the biological mother carries the baby, and therefore may bond more with the child.

“There are ethical questions about forcing a woman to give up her genetic child,” Feinman said. “We just stay away from it.”

Feinman has earned the respect of the director of the 15-year old Center for Surrogate Parenting, which refers patients to him from around the world.

“Each patient is important to Dr. Feinman,” said Karen Synesiou, the center’s director. “He also treats the surrogate moms with respect. And other doctors have forgotten that.”

“60 Minutes, Australia” recently completed the first of a three-part series on the center, bringing an infertile couple across the ocean to document the surrogate process from start to finish.

“I knew I was going to get international publicity, and I needed to know that the couple would be with a physician I could trust to do the right thing, one who had a good chance of success and who would treat the couple and the surrogate well,” Synesiou said. “I sent them to Dr. Michael Feinman.”

The first attempt at pregnancy with that couple and their surrogate failed, Feinman said. Next month, the couple will make a second try at having a family when Feinman receives a shipment of the couple’s fertilized, frozen eggs from Australia and implants them in a California surrogate.

Surrogacy, Feinman said, has turned out to be a very satisfying part of his practice.

“Good embryos. Good uteruses. Mucho babies,” he said. “Everybody’s happy.”