‘All she wanted was to be a mother’
Septuplets’ birth put U.S. woman in spotlight
Patricia Frustaci, a teacher who gave birth in 1985 to the first septuplets known to have been born in the United States, an event that put her in the glare of the international news media, died Feb. 10 at a hospital near her home in San Diego. She was 63.
The cause was complications of pulmonary fibrosis, said her son Joseph, who was born a little more than a year before his seven siblings.
Frustaci and her husband, Sam, struggled with infertility for years before she gave birth to Joseph in March 1984 with the help of the drug Pergonal. They were eager to expand their family, so they continued treatment with the drug, and by that November Patricia Frustaci was pregnant again.
An ultrasound procedure the following January revealed seven fetuses, and Frustaci’s obstetrician suggested several courses of action, among them abortion. That was anathema to the Frustacis, who were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints, which is opposed to abortion in almost all cases.
“With our religious background and all we had gone through to have kids, that just wasn’t an option,” Patricia Frustaci told The New York Times in 1985.
The Frustacis resolved to have the babies, despite the medical risks. On May 21, 1985, Patricia Frustaci delivered four boys and three girls by caesarean section, about 12 weeks premature. Intense news coverage ensued, with many outlets calling the birth the largest in the United States, even though the seventh child, a girl named Christina, was stillborn.
The six surviving children all had heart problems, jaundice and hyaline membrane disease, a respiratory ailment. They were whisked into intensive care, where a team of neonatal doctors struggled to save them. One of the babies, a boy named David, died about three days after he was born.
Frustaci spent more than a week in the hospital recovering. She got to hold her surviving children in the neonatal intensive care unit before she left the hospital in early June. The children remained in intensive care.
“They’re beautiful,” she told reporters when she left. “I just hope they live.”
Two others, a daughter named Bonnie and a son named James, died before the three remaining children — Stephen, Richard and Patricia — went home.
All three of the surviving septuplets faced grave health concerns that initially required near-constant care.
In Oc t ober 1 985, t he couple sued the Tyler Medical Clinic, the fertility centre in Los Angeles that had overseen Patricia Frustaci’s treatment, and Dr. Jaroslav Marik, a fertility specialist there, alleging malpractice.
The suit contended that Frustaci had not been properly monitored early in her pregnancy and t hat t he dose of Perganol she had received was too high. Marik contended t hat Frustaci had been negligent in failing to obtain the ultrasound treatments he had recommended.
The suit was settled in 1990 for a one-time payment of $ 450,000 and a monthly care payment for each of the three surviving septuplets, who needed extensive physical therapy and medical treatment. The Frustacis’ son Joseph said the family still received the payments, and that the total amount paid so far had exceeded $1.5 million.
The difficulties of raising her family did not dissuade Patricia Frustaci from adding to it. In 1990, after undergoing further fertility treatments, she gave birth to healthy twins, Jordan and Jaclyn.
She was born Patricia Ann Jorgensen on Nov. 19, 1954, at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. Her f ather, Richard, was in the Air Force and later ran an advertising agency; her mother, the former Bonnie Palfreyman, was a homemaker.
Frustaci received a bachelor’s degree in English from Brigham Young University in the mid-1970s and went on to earn a master’s from California State University, Fullerton. She married Sam Frustaci in 1981, and they soon tried to start a family.
The news media coverage of the septuplets opened the Frustacis to some criticism. “One baby is excellent,” Dr. Heather Irwin, a gynecologist and fertility specialist, told The Miami Herald in late May 1985. “Two is acceptable. Anything more than twins is bad medicine.”
The Frustacis felt compelled to defend themselves. “By no means did we set out to have twins or triplets or more than one child,” Sam Frustaci told The Times, adding, “We were not out to set any records.”
In an interview, Joseph Frustaci said t he media attention, and the criticism, had made it even harder for his mother to deal with the loss of her children.
“Really, all she wanted was to be a mother, and I think the media got in the way, for a time, of her being able to be a loving and nurturing mother,” he said.
The ordeal took a toll on the family, and particularly on Patricia Frustaci, who had bipolar disorder. She and Sam Frustaci, an industrial equipment salesman, were divorced in the mid1990s.
Joseph Frustaci said that even through the difficult years his mother “was really the strength of the family.” All three of the surviving septuplets are doing well, he said. Her daughter Patti Carpenter is married with two children; her son Richard lives independently; and her son Stephen is cared for by his father.