He's a Natural at Fatherhood : Parenting: Donnie Mitchell says his son, conceived in vitro, is 'God-made,' adding that biological origin is irrelevant.

He’s a Natural at Fatherhood : Parenting: Donnie Mitchell says his son, conceived in vitro, is ‘God-made,’ adding that biological origin is irrelevant.

By CAITLIN ROTHER

June 21, 1992 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Last July, Donnie Mitchell found himself looking into a microscope at five human eggs, fertilized by his sperm and soon to be planted into his 52-year-old wife’s womb.

“In school you take physiology, but when you actually see it, you say, ‘There are five children that are mine right there.’ It brought tears to my eyes,” said Mitchell, 46. “I get real emotional talking about this.”

Over the next nine months, one of those bubble-like embryos grew, and Jonie Mosby Mitchell made history 10 weeks ago by becoming the oldest woman in the United States to give birth to an in-vitro baby.

“It’s wonderful,” Mitchell said in a telephone interview from an oil platform off Santa Barbara, where he will work on Father’s Day. “It’s a God-made child. Man didn’t make Morgan.”

Mitchell, who spends every other week at sea, said this is the first week he has really missed his son, his first biological child. “Babies, they scare me,” he said. “I just watch them. I’m the kind of father who pinches him while he’s sleeping to make sure he’s still breathing.”

The Mitchells, who have been married for 15 years, shared the responsibility of raising Jonie Mitchell’s four children from her previous marriage with her former husband and present business partner. Donnie, who had no children of his own, and Jonie also tried unsuccessfully to have a baby.

Four years ago, the Mitchells adopted a newborn girl, whom they named Sydney. Jonie Mitchell decided she wanted to try the in-vitro fertilization method after learning about it on television.

When the first time didn’t take, she was ready to attempt it again.

“I couldn’t figure out why it didn’t work the first time,” said Jonie Mitchell of Ventura. “You see, little Morgan was supposed to be here, but it just took the right combination.”

Donnie Mitchell said he was worried about his wife feeling letdown after the eggs from the first donor, who was found through the USC Medical Center, didn’t take. At $10,000 a try, the expense of the procedure concerned him as well. “I said, ‘Jiminy, Jonie, can we afford it?’ ”

But his wife, he said, has a strong personality and wouldn’t take no for an answer. “You don’t argue with her,” he said.

And he didn’t really want to. “Inside, it thrilled me to death that she would even consider it,” he said. “I said, ‘Oh, all right, whatever.’ I thought it was impossible.”

In the Mitchells’ second attempt, a 30-year-old woman donated five eggs, all of which were implanted in Jonie Mitchell’s uterus with a catheter. After two weeks’ worth of blood tests, the doctors told her, “Congratulations.”

So that his wife could take it easy, Donnie Mitchell took four weeks off work from the Exxon Co. USA platform, Hondo, where he has worked seven days on, seven days off, for the past 12 years. He scrubbed floors, cooked dinner, made beds and dusted.

The pregnancy progressed well and involved the whole family. “She looked at her stomach every day,” he said. “My little girl helped give her (hormone) shots. It was fantastic.”

One of Jonie Mitchell’s older daughters was pregnant at the same time, so “they were filling up a couch together for a few months.”

The Mitchells say they don’t believe it takes bloodlines to make a family. The biological origins of Sydney and Morgan are irrelevant, they say.

“Sydney asks me at times, ‘Did I come out of Mommy’s tummy like Morgan?’ and I say, ‘No,’ ” Donnie Mitchell said. “God just decided that me and Mommy should have you, so he gave you to us.”

Jonie Mitchell said that having Morgan felt no different than giving birth to her four children from her first marriage, or than adopting Sydney. In fact, she said, it was her easiest delivery yet. Her pains were dulled with an epidural and once induced, labor took only 20 minutes.

When Morgan is old enough to understand, the Mitchells have agreed they will tell him exactly how he was conceived. Not to tell him would be difficult, because the newspaper and magazine articles written about Morgan’s birth paper his proud grandfather’s walls.

“It’s a single cell that was transplanted into Jonie, and Jonie nursed him and fed him, so it’s no different than a heart transplant or a liver transplant in my mind,” Donnie Mitchell said.

“I don’t believe in making a child or a person out of pieces, like Frankenstein, but if a person is healthy enough and wants a child, I don’t see any reason not to have one,” he said.

By the time Morgan is old enough to learn about his birth, the Mitchells point out that in-vitro fertilization will not be so unusual. “I doubt if he will even care,” Donnie Mitchell said. “What does someone look for in life but for parents to love them. . .?”