An Irish woman with no womb has become the mother of twin girls thanks to the help of her sister and a Dublin fertility clinic.
The 31-year-old woman’s uterus had never developed as a result of a rare syndrome.
But her older sister agreed to help her and her husband out in their bid to have children by carrying their babies until they were 36 weeks gestation. They were delivered last September.
The pregnancy is believed to be one of the first surrogate pregnancies to have been achieved within the State.
Details of it and and another surrogate pregnancy, also achieved at the Sims International Fertility Clinic in Dundrum, are reported in the latest edition of the Irish Medical Journal.
A 29-year-old woman who had her eggs preserved prior to cancer treatment was the subject of the second case. Again her sister agreed to act as a surrogate mother. However in this case the woman’s frozen embryo did not survive thaw and could not be transferred to her sister’s womb.
But all was not lost as her 25 year old sister, who already had a son of her own, agreed to donate some of her eggs to allow her sister have children. These were fertilised with sperm from the 29-year-old’s partner and a twin pregnancy was achieved.
The report in the IMJ states: “Healthy twins were delivered at 36 weeks gestation by Caesarean and were discharged from hospital to the commissioning mother and father after four days."
It adds that gestational surrogacy is lawfully permitted in only a few European countries. “Although legal in Ireland for several years, its clinical deployment here awaited assent from the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland’s Institute of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists, which came in 2006.
The IVF patients presented in the current report embarked on treatment shortly thereafter and are believed to be the first in Ireland to conceive using this treatment,” it says.
Dr Tony Walsh, medical director of the Sims Clinic, said yesterday there are now others “lining up” to use the technique.
“It’s great to have another treatment regime that eliminates infertility for couples and gives them the joy of children,” he added.