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.