I've just been reading about a "miracle" birth in the States, where a woman has given birth to quintuplets after fertility treatment. The tiny babies were born at 28 weeks and are apparently "critical but stable". It is so very sad that anyone who has had to go through the traumas of not being able to conceive should then have the further trauma of premature babies spending weeks if not months in intensive care in hospital. The babies are in an intensive care unit that has just recently been caring for sextuplets, born to a couple who had IUI.
No reputable fertility professional should be putting the lives of babies and mothers at risk by carrying out treatment which results in the conception of five or six babies at once. We are only hearing about the babies which make it as far as being born, albeit prematurely, but it would be far more common to miscarry when so many embryos implant at the same time.
In the early days of fertility treatments, when specialists were still unsure quite how women's bodies would react to fertility drugs, such multiple conceptions may have been more understandable, but there is no need for anyone to take such risks any more - and any fertility specialist who boasts sextuplets or quintuplets on their CV should be avoided as they certainly don't have their patient's best interests at heart.
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