Advances in fertility treatments are often credited with an increase in the rate of multiple births, especially higher order multiples like triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets and more. A new fertility treatment recently produced a triplet pregnancy using a moth'er's frozen eggs, offering new hope for women who have trouble conceiving. The successful conception is particularly of interest to women who lose their fertility due to cancer treatment, and have the opportunity to freeze and store their eggs prior to beginning the sterility-inducing treatment.
Doctors at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California announced the successful procedure. Eggs from the mother's ovaries were retrieved and stored in liquid nitrogen, then thawed. They were inseminated using invitro fertilization, then returned to the mother's uterus. In this case, a thirty-one-year-old mother in Los Angeles became pregnant with fraternal triplets, and expects to deliver them in early 2006.
While the results of this study are hopeful, the procedure is still under investigation and not widely available. The relationship between reproductive technology and multiple birth is controversial. While it creates miraculous opportunities for childless couples to fullfill their dreams of having a family, some parents who are desparate to have a child may end up with more than they can handle, including babies who may face lifelong complicaitons from the crowded experience of sharing a womb with several siblings and being forced into the world too early.
