After trying artificial insemination, and considering and rejecting in-vitro fertilization, Val Archibald jumped off the infertility treadmill. She downshifted into a journey to figure out why she couldn't conceive. While it means Archibald likely won't get pregnant because of her age, the 41-year-old and her husband decided the end didn't justify the means.

"I remember walking into the waiting room for my IVF consult. There were at least five other couples. I felt like I was part of this desperate group of people. I thought, 'This is not what I want. This is unacceptable. I want something else.' "

What the Holladay woman found is Natural Procreative Technology, a so-called natural approach to infertility based on Roman Catholic teachings that is gaining a small following in Utah. It's cheaper than IVF, which costs $10,570 each time a woman's eggs are extracted, fertilized and implanted. And a new study claims Natural Procreative Technology has about the same success rate at delivering a baby.

But the approach is too new to convince skeptical fertility doctors and patients who are running out of time.

"[IVF] has that appeal of being high-tech and it has a reputation of 'if this doesn't work, nothing will,'?" says Joseph Stanford, Archibald's doctor and one of the few in Utah who practice the natural approach. "Whether or not that's justified is another question."

Archibald, who is Catholic, thinks more couples would choose the alternative if they knew about it.

"When I met Dr. Stanford, his whole demeanor was different," she said. "He said, 'Your infertility has taken years to come about. It might take a couple of years to work this out.' … Just someone saying it's normal for this to take some time [was a relief]."

'Correct what isn't working' » NPT was created in the 1990s at the nonprofit Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction in Omaha. The institute opened in response to the now-40-year-old papal encyclical that reiterated the Catholic Church's position against contraception and abortion.

Its mission, according to the institute Web site, is "dedicated to building a culture of life … by confronting artificial reproductive technologies that suppress, distort and alter women's fertility; that negatively impact marriages and families; and that lead to the 'new abortion.' " Embryos are destroyed during IVF.

NPT combines fertility tracking, so women know when they are most likely to conceive and doctors can assess their hormone levels, with procedures and medications to correct underlying problems. Those might include taking hormone supplements, medications to induce ovulation, or surgery to remove endometriosis or to unblock fallopian tubes.

Doctors won't manipulate sperm or eggs outside the body. "We're trying to correct what isn't working so that normal intercourse can result in pregnancy," says Stanford. "Sometimes that happens in conventional fertility treatment. It's not the focus. The focus is pregnancy by whatever means."

He said the natural approach is appealing to couples on medical or moral grounds. Some women don't want to go through invasive IVF procedures, which require that ovaries be overstimulated, eggs be removed and fertilized in a lab, and the resulting embryos be reimplanted.

Some object on moral grounds, since some embryos are destroyed and because life is being created outside a conjugal act. The Catholic Church opposes IVF.

But it's not just Catholics who use the method. Stanford is Mormon and a well-known NPT proponent. He recently spoke in Rome at the annual conference of the American Academy of Fertility Care Professionals, created to promote natural birth control and infertility approaches. He is also the group's past president.

(The LDS Church doesn't have as strong a stance against IVF, saying that using semen or eggs from men or women outside the marriage is "strongly discouraged," while acknowledging the decision is left to the couple.)

Comparing NPT and IVF » But NPT's focus on improving a woman's health first can take years, time that older women don't have. Patients are told it may take 24 months to get pregnant, compared with IVF, which may work in months. NPT also won't work for men who have very low sperm count and women who can't ovulate or have blocked fallopian tubes that can't be repaired.

A study by Stanford, published in the September-October issue of The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, found that 26 percent of couples who used NPT in a clinic in Ireland between 1998 and 2002 had a baby after two years. Excluding the couples who stopped treatment midstream, the success rate jumped to 53 percent.

By comparison, 25 percent of IVF cycles (using unfrozen, nondonor eggs) resulted in a birth in 2000. Five years later, the rate was 28 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But infertility doctors say it's not accurate to compare two years of trying to one cycle of IVF.

The study also showed NPT techniques were able to ferret out causes of infertility and unexplained miscarriages, and even helped some who had failed with IVF in the past.

Like IVF, NPT is more successful for younger patients. It also results in fewer multiple births, a problem with IVF.

It comes on the heels of another study, published in the British Medical Journal in August, showing that two common techniques -- placing sperm inside the uterus, and using the fertility drug clomiphene citrate, marketed as Clomid -- don't work any better than no treatment for patients with unexplained infertility.

C. Matthew Peterson, an infertility doctor at the University of Utah, said its clinic tries to treat underlying causes of infertility first, and it promotes fertility tracking. IVF, he said, is not the first choice for doctors or patients.

But, he said, "in some cases [in which] there are multiple issues going on, sometimes IVF is the best choice for someone who wants to get pregnant."

'No thanks' to a test tube » Susan Boerke of South Salt Lake is such a fan of NPT that she wants to open a clinic dedicated to it. She has seen Stanford for more than a year and takes monthly hormone injections. Without them, she said, she would probably have miscarried if she had gotten pregnant.

The second-grade teacher also is training women how to chart their fertility.

"What if someone doesn't want artificial insemination or in vitro? What's their alternative?" she asks. "Adoption? That's great, but what if they really do want their own baby, and all they had to do is chart and see this problem that's the underlying cause of infertility and get it fixed?"

The 29-year-old, who is Catholic, said her focus now is getting her menstrual cycles healthy. She said it took prayer to get beyond the anger and sadness she felt seeing her friends and family get pregnant.

"I believe God blesses some couples with children and some without and you have to live your life to the fullest," she said. "We don't have any children and we're OK with that."

Even if IVF could give her a baby, she said, she would say, "No thanks. I just wouldn't want my child to be conceived in a test tube."

For Archibald, the journey is near an end. She has had two surgeries to remove endometriosis and is taking hormone supplements. She feels better physically and emotionally.

"I needed to see this through in a way that made me feel at peace and that's what I've done," she says. And she did end up with a baby. When she started NPT, she also began the process to adopt from China. She brought her daughter, now almost 2, home in January and said it was the best decision she and her husband ever made.

Still, she fears most doctors will have no motivation to cure diseases like hers when they can offer up IVF.

"What are doing to the next generation when we aren't getting to these underlying diseases of why women aren't conceiving? We aren't solving the problem, we're just providing an artificial means of getting past it."

hmay@sltrib.com