Pune woman becomes grandmother with dead son's preserved sperm
surrogate mother
Having lost unmarried child to brain tumour two years ago, city-based teacher takes help of surrogacy to bring him back
In an unusual case, a 49-year-old Pune-based teacher fought against all odds to ‘reincarnate’ her son whom she lost two years ago to cancer.
Pune-based 49-year-old Rajashree Patil became a grandmother to twins born via surrogacy methods using her son's cryo-preserved semen.
Semen cryopreservation, which is commonly called sperm banking, is a process of freezing sperm cells to preserve them so that they can be used in the future.
Doctors at Pune's Sahyadri Hospital performed the in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedure and fused Prathamesh Patil's semen, extracted and preserved long before his death in Germany, with the eggs of a donor to form embryos.
The embryos were then transferred into the womb of a surrogate mother, who gave birth to the twins - a boy and a girl - on Monday.
Rajashree contacted the sperm bank in Germany where Prathamesh had preserved his semen and she completed the formalities to bring it back. She then approached Sahyadri Hospitals for the in vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedure to “get her son back”.
“I was carrying the soul of my son in me and was looking for a body to breathe it into. I am going to name the baby boy Prathamesh, after my departed son, and the baby girl Prisha, after my daughter.,” Rajashree Patil said.
(With inputs from PTI)