Our In Vitro Twins, Now Fourteen Years Old!

After almost 20 years of marriage, I and my wife were still in search for medical help to have baby. I was 44 years then and my wife who is 1 year older than me was 45. We had gone through many infertility treatments starting from artificial insemination, sperm freeze, G.I.F.T. (Gamete Intra-fallopian Transfer) and Z.I.F.T (Zygote Intra-fallopian Transfer) techniques.

By then we had visited Gynecologists and Urologists for 16 years. We travelled in and out Thailand to seek more advanced medical helps overseas. My wife had at least 20 pregnancies and miscarriages. The process was not only painful physically but mentally too. You can imagine the suffering of tears after tears when treatments failed. But we never be discourage.

In the early year of 1992, the long awaited infertility technique In vitro fertilization (IVF) came to Thailand. IVF is a technique in which egg cells are fertilized by sperm outside the woman's womb, in vitro. The process involves hormonally controlling the ovulatory process, removing ova (eggs) from the woman's ovaries and letting sperm fertilize them in a fluid medium. The fertilized egg (zygote) is then transferred to the patient's uterus with the intent to establish a successful pregnancy.

It was new here and people were discussing on the issue in various aspects such as moral, safety, cost, etc. One major concern at that time was the future condition of the baby. How would the physical and mental well-being, freedom from disease, etc. of the child be? It was not so much as to the condition when the baby was born but 20, 30 years or even the whole lifetime later. There was still no concrete answer as the 1st IVF baby boy Louise Brown who was born in England in 1978 has not gone through his life time yet. We weighted the pros and cons, and decided to take up the treatment anyhow.

The first treatment turned out with a pregnancy. But again miscarriage followed one month later. Undeterred, we went for the second treatment. This time the Gynecologist transferred in 4 of our frozen embryos left over earlier from our first IVF treatment back to the uterus. Two weeks later while I was working in my office one afternoon, our Gynecologist called to break the pregnancy news. It was cheerful although not so much of an excitement as we had had heard of pregnancies many many times before. "But this time is different, the hormone test is exceptionally high and your wife should move into the hospital immediately to prevent repeating miscarriage", he sounded exciting. We packed and went off to the hospital immediately without further questioning. It turned out to be the longest stay in the hospital for my wife. Eight months later, Doctor decided to have a caesarian operation to deliver the twin. It fell on the auspicious day of December the 5th, the Birth date of our King. How time flies. John, the elder twin and his brother James are 14 years old now. They are in the High school 2nd grade in an International school near by the house. Looking back all these years, we can see both are very healthy physically, mentally and spiritually. There has not been any slight symptom that many have feared of. For those who still have doubt in the well being of an IVF child, I trust this essay will serve as useful information for you.