CHENNAI: When Priya heard that she was carrying twins, she was overjoyed. After 17 years of battling infertility the 37-year-old woman, who returned with her husband from the Gulf, finally approached the fertility experts at a hospital in Vadapalani about a year ago. “We attempted a few cycles of IVF for her, but they were unsuccessful. In between I tried a single cycle of intrauterine insemination (IUI) and surprisingly she conceived twins,” said Dr Jeyarani Kamaraj, specialist at Aakash Fertility Centre. But that’s where the good news ended for Priya. Doctors monitoring her children’s progress found that her children had twin-to-twin-transfusion syndrome (TTTS). Though she didn’t quite understand what this rare genetic disorder entailed, the fact that one of her children had a 60-100 percent mortality struck her hard. “Normally one of the twins doesn’t survive,” said the doctor, explaining the severity of the condition. TTTS basically means that both children are formed from a single placenta and the pregnancy is termed monochrionic. “They share the same blood supply line from the mother. As a result the blood, nutrients and everything else that is transmitted from the mother to the children is given to either disproportionately,” she said. Thus while one child is healthy and receives copius quantities of blood, the other is starved of blood and usually underdeveloped. “Death can occur in either child, from too little blood or too much of it,” she added.After months of monitoring and worry for Priya, the doctors decided to deliver the babies after 34 weeks of pregnancy, “One twin was already very weak and we didn’t want to risk allowing it to go to full term (36 weeks),” said the doctor, explaining why they decided to perform a C-section on May 9. When they completed the delivery doctors found that while one baby weighed 2.3 kg and was healthy, the other weighed only 645 gms. “The child is a fighter and managed to survive with our neonatal care. After 12 hours we shifted one of the girls to Apollo for observation and she has been breathing without a respirator for almost five days now,” said the jubilant gynaecologist. Though an emotional Priya cannot hold her children as they have to be in an incubator for the next week, she is relieved to be one of the lucky women to have both her babies alive and well despite this condition, and she isn’t really worried about the future of the weaker, less developed child.
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