One Couple's Journey From Hope To Heartbreak

LOS ANGELES - The seven babies born to Patti and Sam Frustaci in 1985 took the couple on an odyssey from hope to heartbreak: Only three of the infants survived.

The septuplets - four boys and three girls - were born by Caesarean section 12 weeks premature in Orange, Calif. One was stillborn. The other six ranged in weight from 1 pound, 1 ounce to 1 pound, 13 ounces.

Over the next 19 days, three died, all from hyaline membrane disease, a condition in which the lungs collapse after each breath.

Yesterday, the surviving children - Patricia, Richard and Stephen - and their three siblings watched television for a glimpse of coverage of the septuplets born in Iowa.

Patricia, the first born, was not enthusiastic. "It kind of bugs me," she said in a story published today in The Press-Enterprise of Riverside.

Her father, Sam Frustaci, was quoted as saying: "I don't want people to know how I'm doing, how the kids are doing. I really don't want to go there. It's not pleasant."

Attempts by The Associated Press to contact the Frustacis yesterday were unsuccessful.

Like Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey, whose septuplets were born yesterday, the Frustacis also used the fertility drug Pergonal.

What began as the promise of hope for a large family quickly became an ordeal. Expenses of more than $1 million were only partially offset by offers of help, free food, goods and services and an exclusive interview contract with People magazine.

As mortality of the infants accelerated, many of the offers and endorsements faded away or never materialized.

Patti, a teacher, and Sam, an industrial tool salesman, had sought fertility assistance because of their deep desire for family grounded in their Mormon beliefs. Before they conceived the septuplets, they already had one son, named Joseph.

The Frustacis faced a series of extreme medical difficulties with the surviving septuplets. The children suffered breathing and neurological difficulties and additional complications. They have mild cerebral palsy and severe eyesight problems.

Patti Frustaci said in a 1995 interview in People magazine that her husband initially joked "about having a litter and buying Gravy Train" when he learned she was pregnant with septuplets.

A few months after the births, humor became a moot point.

R. Brown Greene, their attorney at the time, said yesterday their lives were under siege. Ultimately, the couple filed a lawsuit against the clinic and the physician who treated Patti Frustaci and won a $2.7 million settlement on behalf of the surviving children.

In 1991, six years after the birth of the septuplets, Patti Frustaci gave birth to healthy twins, also aided by Pergonal.

"She got the healthy babies she wanted," Greene said in an interview after the 1991 births. "That's what this was all about."

Sam Frustaci offered some advice for the McCaugheys, cautioning them to avoid the publicity his family experienced.

"I hope and pray in all sincerity that their babies are healthy," he said. "And I hope that together they can raise them in a way as normal as possible in that situation. I hope on their behalf that they can live as normal a life as possible."