Since posting the news story about the arrival of California’s octuplets last week a lot of new information has come out. When I originally posted the article the big stories were that this was only the second set of live-born octuplets in the United States, all the babies were doing really well, and that the arrival of the babies had renewed debate over the ethical dilemmas surrounding fertility treatments.

My how the plot has thickened…

The grandmother of the octuplets has shared some very interesting information with reporters in the last few days. Including that the octuplets have 6 (yes I said 6) siblings waiting at home for them. They all live together in the grandparents 3 bedroom California home.

The grandmother advised reporters that the mom is a single parent and all of the children, including the octuplets, were conceived using IVF (invetro fertilization). This procedure involves harvesting a woman’s eggs (or using donor eggs), fertilizing them outside of the womb and then implanting the embryos into the mother’s uterus. In this procedure the number of embryos can be fully controlled by the doctor and strict guidelines exist about keeping the number of embryos implanted to a minimum to avoid a potentially dangerous high-order multiples pregnancy. Clearly the fertility specialist in this case choose to ignore those guidelines putting both mother and babies at risk.

In light the the clear ethical implications of the doctor’s decision I definitely think the medical review board needs to take a long hard look at this case and determine if the fertility specialist should be allowed to continue practicing. I mean, clearly he or she let greed cloud their better judgment. No fertility specialist in their right mind would agree to implant 8 embryos into this woman. They probably wouldn’t agree to implant 8 embryos into any woman, but especially not someone who already had 6 children, was not married, and lived at home with her parents. I think both the mother and the fertility specialist dodged a bullet on this one since all 8 babies were born healthy and are doing well so far.

I have to wonder who is footing the bill for the medical care for the octuplets. I don’t think it has been reported yet if the woman worked and we don’t know if she had private medical insurance. If not, then I would guess that California’s medicaid program is footing the bill for that babies’ very expensive medical care. Just another thing to debate about this whole situation. It is definitely going to open up the current guidelines surrounding fertility treatments for debate and discussion. I’m sure new, stricter guidelines will come about as a result of this story.

It will be interesting to see what additional information comes to light about this story in the coming days and weeks. I just hope the 8 little babies continue to do well and that all 14 children are well taken care of. All of those children deserve the best, regardless of the arguably bad decisions made by their mother. I can’t imagine what it will be like for this woman when all 8 newborns come home. 14 children is a lot for anyone to handle, but most especially when 8 of those are helpless little newborns, my goodness.