The Post-Standard, (Syracuse, NY)

September 5, 1999

IN AFTERMATH OF STORM, COUPLE STARTS FAMILY

By Amber Smith, Staff writer

The winds of the 1998 Labor Day storm finally were still.

 Central New Yorkers peered into soaked darkness, at trees criss-crossing streets and leaning on houses. Power lines hung loose. Rescuers poked through rubble at the state fairgrounds.

In the quiet aftermath of the vicious winds, another drama was unfolding. Dr. Robert Kiltz was zipping around downed power lines and trees, bent on reaching the incubator at his office near Community-General Hospital. It was a matter of life  -  or no life.

 In the incubator were embryos, created from the sperm and eggs of a man and woman who had been trying for six years to conceive a child. Without power, the embryos wouldn't survive, and all the couple had gone through in the months leading up to Sept. 7 would be for naught.

 Kiltz counted on a telephone call if the power went out to the incubator. The storm disrupted phone lines. By the time the fertility specialist was notified, he had to hustle. The incubator's battery backup worked beautifully, "but it wasn't going to last much longer," he recalls.

 The phone rang about 2 a.m. at David Nagowski's home in Pennellville. A senior Border Patrol agent, Nagowski figured he was being summoned to duty.

 It was Kiltz.

 "You're going to come in later anyway," the doctor started. "Any chance you can come now?"

 Nagowski told his wife, Amy, to get ready, and the two set off on a trip that normally would take 40 minutes.

 They had to disconnect their electric garage door so they could get their car out of their garage. They turned on the car radio, and that's the first they heard of how severe the storm was. Closer to the hospital, they found themselves trapped in a maze of streets blocked by trees and power lines. They had to double back several times. Finally, they arrived at Community-General about an hour and a half later.

 Using flashlights, they tromped through the adjacent office building to find Kiltz. Shortly after, under generator lights in the hospital, the doctor placed the embryos inside Amy. A few weeks later, her pregnancy test was positive.

 The Nagowskis now have a healthy baby girl  -  whose creation took shape as dawn shed light on the Labor Day Storm damage.

 The couple started trying to create a family in 1993. After a year without success, Amy Nagowski had surgery to clear her diseased fallopian tubes. The couple continued to try, for another 18 months.

 During that time, they thought about adoption and became less enthused as they read news reports of adoptions that fall through because birth parents have a change of heart.

 Fertility drugs didn't have any effect. Intrauterine insemination didn't work.

 The Border Patrol promoted David Nagowski and transferred him from the Buffalo area to the Syracuse area in January 1997.

 Shortly thereafter, Amy's new doctors discovered that her tubes were blocked again. She was scheduled for surgery. When she showed up for pre-operative blood work in May 1997, she was surprised to discover she was pregnant.

 She miscarried 10 days later.

 "After the miscarriage," she says, "I kind of took the summer off."

 By December 1997, she was ready to try something more aggressive. Rather than undergo more surgery to unblock her fallopian tubes, she wanted to try invitro fertilization. She wanted doctors to remove her eggs, mix them with her husband's sperm in a petri dish, and then return them to her body.

 She started her first cycle of medication in May 1998. Follistem was injected daily into her hip; Lupron into her stomach.

 It didn't work.

 The Nagowskis waited a few months and tried again in August 1998.

 Kiltz removed Amy's eggs on Sept. 4, a Friday. The plan was to help the sperm fertilize the eggs by carefully and precisely slicing the eggs open. His embryologist, Voytek Polanski, would do that with a high-powered microscope, and then Kiltz would implant the embryos on Monday, Labor Day.

 The storm moved up those plans by several hours  -  and had the effect of relaxing the Nagowskis.

 "I think we were a little more relaxed," says Amy Nagowki, 37. "Nothing else was going our way."

 David Nagowski, 34, felt the same way. "We figured if it's going to happen, it's going to happen."

 Three weeks later, Amy Nagowski went for a blood test. Kiltz looked at the results. "This is good. This looks positive," he told her.

 David Nagowski was doing a road test with New York State Troopers when he got the page from her and learned the good news. His hopes shot up.

 He's the youngest of three children. His father came from a family of nine. He was constantly asked when he was going to start a family, and he patiently admired the Father's Day gifts his co-workers would show off.

 "Who would have thought when we got married that this is what we'd have to go through?" he thought, still amazed at the positive test. "That's the miracle of the whole thing."

 Still not believing it was really true, the Nagowskis told Amy's parents in September. They told David's parents a week later. They shared their news with siblings at family gatherings starting at Thanksgiving, as Amy began wearing maternity clothes.

 By January, they heard their baby's heartbeat and felt the little one move. And soon after, they tallied their medical receipts as they prepared their taxes. Two cycles of in vitro fertilization cost them about $20,000, most of which was not covered by their health insurer.

 About 10 p.m. June 1, Amy started spotting. Then her water broke. They got to St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center shortly before Bobbi Jo was born by Cesarean section, at 1:40 a.m. The baby weighed 5 pounds, 7 ounces and was 19 1/2  inches long.

 "All we asked for was a healthy baby, and that's what we got," Amy says, watching her husband pat their new daughter's back.

 It's two months later, and they're finally settling into a routine that allows mom and dad some sleep.

 David Nagowski looks at their miniature collie, Asti. The dog has adapted well to the new family member. Sometimes though, when David burps Bobbi Jo on one shoulder, Asti will jump up and put her snout on his other shoulder.

 The Nagowskis have no special plans for this Labor Day, but they know how fortunate they are to have such a dream come true.

 "Just to get pregnant in that storm," Amy says, "that, in itself, is a miracle."