This is no sci fi. Babies can be kept in deep freeze for years, their development deliberately halted in the embryonic stage, till the mother is ready to get them implanted in her womb. Incredible but true!

This story began about 12 years ago when a couple fell in love and got married at the age of 25 years. Though an ideal age to start a family, like most modern couples, they decided to wait for the usual reasons – career and financial stability but, to use clichéd term, the body clock waits for none. The ovaries have a limited life span and when they were ready, no baby ensued. Multiple visits to infertility centers yielded no results. After a stressful 3 year period, it was decided that IVF (in vitro fertilization) was the final hope. Though an expensive and emotionally draining enterprise, with limited success rates, they had no choice. In a natural cycle a single egg is produced at a time, but in IVF cycles the ovary is induced to produce several eggs, which are harvested and fertilized outside the body.  Of the six eggs fertilized, 3 were inserted in the uterus, while the rest were put in deep freeze. One egg implanted leading to the birth of a baby boy who filled their world with joy. Though they paid a heavy rental for the fertilised eggs hibernating in the IVF centre, the couple barely spared them a thought. The years went by and the 3 embryos, capable of becoming fully developed babies, remained frozen in time and space.

When the son was old enough to see that his friends had siblings, he demanded not one but two!  It was a demand they could not ignore and the 3 embryos kept in deep freeze were thawed and put inside the uterus. There was a robust implantation of one embryo while but a flicker of a heart beat was seen by its side on ultrasound.  Could it be another? In most cases the smaller of the discordant embryos dies which is why it is called the ‘vanishing twin’. Not this spunky little one, as a later ultrasound showed. It gained size and was soon at par with the normal one. She was a born fighter; I did think that she was a female for females are the stronger sex in matters that matter and the chances of a ‘she’ surviving were far better than a ‘he’. Sure enough, one fine March morning a fine pair of female offspring were born. What made me, the proud grandmother and obstetrician rolled into one, marvel over and over again was

• That they were the same cellular age as their brother though born 4 years after him!
• That despite being in a state of suspended animation for years they were flawless!

Though I have always worshipped Mother Nature, what held me in thrall this time, was the miracle of science.