  patients,” Gindlesperger says. “The way that we work, it’s also a roller coaster ride for us. We get attached. When we’re talking about being foster parents, it’s not just to the embryos, it’s actually to the patients themselves.”
“We’ve been there, we’ve been down the road with other patients like them,” Kontio agrees. “We’re happy when they’re happy.”
Embryologists have a penchant for having everything just right. Some become superstitious.
They wear the same socks or lucky shoes for each procedure. Kontio and Gindlesperger are a little different. They call on faith.
When the SIU doctors inject the embryos into their female patients, Gindlesperger recites four Hail Mary’s in the time that it takes to remove the catheter. When Kontio leaves the lab every night, he says a prayer asking for positive outcomes for his patients.
It’s surprising to hear scientists talk about spirituality, but the senior embryologists maintain that they couldn’t do their work — help create a child — if they didn’t believe that a higher power was guiding their hands. Their stand on science is spiritually based, Kontio and Gindlesperger explain, because they intimately experience the complex nature of human life every day. “We have a respect for the divine nature of human beings,” Kontio says. “And for the fact that we have the opportunity to be involved in creating another human being. You can’t lose that respect. If you do, that’s when you let things slide. That’s when you fail.” Contact Amanda Robert at [email protected]. 
|
