Mrs. Cooper said she and her husband continued to live together because "I was afraid I couldn't make it on my own." She also thought it would be better for Michael. But, she said, she had decided to leave her husband the day doctors warned them that their son's death could be imminent. "John stayed at work for another nine hours," she said. "From that point on, I knew I was going to divorce him."

The New Life Tension Grows Over Children

Mark Wesolowski couldn't take his eyes off Mrs. Cooper. "He stared at me every time I walked out the door," she recalled. They lived in the same apartment complex in Montgomeryville, Pa. While riding with a friend one day, she saw his parked Corvette and left her phone number tucked under the windshield wiper.

He called some days later. They started spending hours chatting around the pool and soon became fast friends. When they both had to move in April 1986, they decided to cut expenses by sharing a house in Telford, Pa. That's where their platonic relationship turned romantic. But Mrs. Cooper said she never thought they had a future.

They talked about marriage, but floundered on the issue of children. A Fateful Ad

"I wasn't going to put myself in the situation where if he wanted kids, I'd have to go through another divorce," Mrs. Cooper said.

The tension between them mounted, their fights intensified. They considered adoption, but rejected it. "I have a friend, a doctor, who has been on the waiting list for seven years," she said. "Where does that put us? I've had a bankruptcy and Mark's a construction worker."

On Aug. 7, 1988, Mrs. Cooper noticed a five-inch ad for the Christian Fertility Institute, an announcement of the Lehigh Valley clinic's 25th and 26th in-vitro babies. "One day I'm going to see this doc," she vowed. So she clipped the ad and put it in Mr. Wesolowski's bureau.

Two frustrating years later they dug out the clip.

"I had been so detached from God when Michael was ill, I felt good about it being the Christian Fertility Clinic," said Mrs. Cooper, a Lutheran. "I felt maybe somebody is going to cut me a break. Instead of medicine inflicting pain, I thought maybe it could provide a gift."