Quintuplets - should this really be a success story?

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.

Why sextuplets are not a good idea...

If you've thought about travelling abroad for fertility treatment and have maybe wondered whether the relaxed regulations in other countries might be part of the attraction, think again... I've just been reading an article about a woman in the States who has given birth to sextuplets after fertility treatment - ten weeks early. Five of them are apparently doing "as well as can be expected", which given their prematurity and very low birth weights will undoubtedly mean problems ahead. The sixth baby faces "greater challenges". Their mother was offered "selective reduction", which is a way of dealing with bad decisions made during fertility treatment, but felt unable to take that option. In this particular case, it wasn't that too many embryos had been transferred during IVF. These sextuplets were the result of IUI. In this country, when a fertility specialist stimulates the ovaries during IUI, the treatment is tailored to aim to produce one or at most two eggs. Any responsible specialist would immediately stop treatment if there was a danger of this this kind of risky high-order multiple pregnancy. According to the article I read, there are as many as 2,000 cases of selective reduction each year in the States, and it's little wonder that there is sometimes such vehement opposition to fertility treatment. The fact that it is "hard to regulate" IUI seems to be the excuse - but surely it is time for fertility specialists to face up to the consequences of the treatments they are offering. Our system in the UK is not without faults, but it's only when you see what can happen in other places that you realise quite how lucky we are. See the article in question here

Sextuplets

The birth of sextuplets to a couple in Oxfordshire has been trumpeted in the media, and many people will inevitably assume that the babies must be the product of IVF. In fact, multiple pregnancies of this order after IVF do not happen in the UK, as our system is carefully regulated to ensure that babies born after assisted conception have the best possible chance of a healthy life.

These six tiny babies were born prematurely, each weighing less than two pounds, and their chances of survival now hang in the balance despite round the clock medical care.

The mother in this case had taken a fertility drug - quite possibly Clomid - and it is here that many multiple birth problems lie. The use of fertility drugs by themselves is unregulated in the UK. People can get them from a GP or they can even be purchased online, and in these cases the ovaries are not always scanned and monitored to ensure that there is no chance of a risky pregnancy with triplets or more. Although our fertility services are sometimes criticised for being too closely regulated, this is one area where we could do with a little more regulation in order to ensure that dangerous high-order multiple pregnancies become a thing of the past.