The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : She is proud mother of over 800 babies now

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 05, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

She is proud mother of over 800 babies now

Ramya Kannan

A unique union of babies, thrilled mothers and proud doctor A unique union of babies, thrilled mothers and proud doctor The common thread: They are the result of the Assisted Reproduction Therapy conducted at Dr. Kamala Selvaraj's G.G. Hospital

REUNION: Kamala Selvaraj with some of the test tube-born children in Chennai on Saturday. — Photo: Vino John

CHENNAI: On Saturday evening, at Hotel Palmgrove here, the air was heavy with the smell of sugary cotton candy, fresh, powdered and cheerful babies gurgling at their mothers and the woman who gave them life.

Over 160 children, some babes, others older, milled around the lawns of the hotel chasing balloons, the merry-go-round and each other, while their parents expressed their gratitude to the doctor, Kamala Selvaraj, and her team. That, then, was the common thread.

All the children were born as a result of assisted reproduction therapy (ART), more commonly called `test tube babies' at Dr. Selvaraj's G.G. Hospital.

They were only a fraction of the 842 babies so born, the ones who could make it to the party on Saturday, the first ever such reunion in the country.

Fact sheets are pasted on boards at the entrance to the lawns: The total number of ART procedures done — 5,224; ART pregnancies — 1,791; ART delivered — 842; Ongoing ART — 145; first test tube baby in South India; first set of triplets to be born so; first set of twins; other achievements couched in the language of science.

This little matters though, when emotions clog the air and are easy to fathom that evening: gratitude, happiness and ecstasy.

Aruna Nagasubramaniam, for instance, is thrilled. After 10 years of marriage and six ART attempts at various centres, she gave birth to history-making triplets Ajay, Aja and Anuj. "I am so happy now. It was when we had completely given up hope that this miracle happened." The kids are champs at yoga and school toppers, the mother boasts.

It is much the same with Kamalarathnam, high achiever and the first South Indian test tube baby (1990). From Sundarapandiapuram, next to Thenkasi, her parents came to Chennai on the advice of Dr. Selvaraj's father Gemini Ganesan.

"Our child was one among six ART projects and she was the only one who was born," her father Ramamurthy says. It is his hope that she will top in the twelfth board exams next year.

Is there something extra then? Dr. Selvaraj says combining the best sperm with the best egg under the optimal conditions produces healthy, intelligent children. But it is not their intelligence that brings tears to her eyes.

It is the simple fact of their existence.

As parents and children jostle around each other to pose for pictures with them, the doctor snatches few minutes to spill over the pride she bears to the media,

"These babies, they are all my very own."

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