Surat, Dec 11 : 45-year-old Shobhnaben became probably India's first surrogate mother for her daughter Bhavika, and gave birth to two babies through the IVF method in a Surat hospital.
Shobhna, a mother of four, was depressed when she found her daughter Bhavika was born without a womb at birth. Bhavika told this to her fiance Saurabh, who married her despite her physical drawback.
The couple first hunted for a surrogate mother, but in view of legal tangles involved, they could not hire one.
It was then that Shobhnaben came forward to offer her womb.
The doctors in Surat faced a problem. Since Bhavika had no womb, there were very few hormones in her body from which female eggs could be extracted.
Bhavika was first given hormonal treatment after which the male sperm from Saurabh and female eggs from Bhavika were taken in a test tube to be inserted in Shobhna's womb.
There were four embryos in the beginning, out of which one died, the other was very weak which was taken out, but the remaining two embryos were fine. After conceiving for nine months, Shobhnaben gave birth to two healthy babies, says Dr Pooja Nadkarni.
The family celebrated the birth of the babies both in the hospital and in their home in Surat.
