This is the story of women just among the thousands, who visit us.
Profile: (when she came to us)
Name: ABC
Married: 23 years.
Children: none
Job: hopping infertility centres
Husband: Business
Moments of happiness: None
Moments of desperation and tears : everyday.
Attitude from society: no need to explain.
When Mrs ABC Name to see me, she did not cry, she did not smile, she just had a ghostly expression on her face. Well, you would not really expect anything more from here after visiting around 30 centres for infertility treatments in the last 23 years. There is not a single month in the calendar, which she had spared trying to achieve motherhood. After the first year of marriage, their plight began, initially it was only medicines and scans and tests. Later it progressed to intra uterine inseminations (IUI) where she waited with all her dignity forgotten. Still hoping to see the innocent toothless smile. When the 12th month of IUI also marked with painful periods, her husband felt pity for her and both started years and years of diet and bottles and bottles of distasteful concoction followed, After 3 years of sacrifice, one of their friends suggested a magical healing from a specialist homeo. They did not leave any stone unturned. And homeo followed Ayurveda and so did many others.
Modern medicine had new things coming up, and they both packed bags for Bombay. She dreamed about her baby in a test tube, all the way in the train while her husband tried to calculate to meet ends after the huge investment in IVF. The second and third IVF were done after he worked harder and harder to see a smile on her face. They did think about adoption but the nightmares of the child being called names by the naive people of there village hurt them.
She tried to look happy, when she came back from every function that she attended. She cried in the toilet, because she loved her husband and did not want him to see her tears.
He worked day and night to expand his business, he sold all the disposable property they had and they managed to make the finance for ICSI treatment. Fortunately they did not have to go far, medicine had advanced in Kerala.
The age had diseased her uterus. As if crying for mercy the womb developed tumours called fibroids which caused her pain and heavy bleeding. Ultimately doctors of the highest specialist order managed to dig out some of the fibroids from her uterus through laparoscopic surgery. They were sure that the second ICSI will be successful, as the uterus was lighter now.
Alas! The surgery had left all the organs in her pelvis sticking like a gum, and as if in a vengeance, more and more fibroids appeared in her next scan and then went the second by surgery, now the doctors opened her up for thorough cleaning of the internal organs followed by a third attempt of ICSI. Year passed by at this attempt of fight with the fate, it had taken toll on both of them. So much of hope a human can have, one wonders after hearing their story.
When I told them that, I can help them, they did not believe at first. They still could not believe their eyes, when I first showed them the scan picture of 2 tiny pregnancies in the surrogate mother. All the doubts melted away when they saw the movements of their 2 tiny babies on screen on their third month.
The eggs that we retrieved from her and fertilized with husband sperm in the IVF lab had now become a full grown babies, in the surrogate mothers womb, by 8th month.
The one moment I cannot forget, is the one when I saw the face of the couple when I handed over the twin babies to them. We did not even bother to clean or dress them before we gave them to their mama and papa, they had waited, way too long for that moment. More than a doctor, I felt myself as a human being at that moment. Then I saw tears rolling down and I was happy to see, the warm tears washing of the blood from the boy and the girl.
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