By Avia Ustanny, Gleaner Writer
The boys are more than a handful.
MAHESH AND Rahesh Jackson are just leaving that stage which is described by their parents and hinted at in the textbooks as "real terrible".
The three-year-old twins have started pre-school and this has provided a change which ought to be welcome for their hard-working mother.
Instead, however, she feels deeply conflicted about letting them go.
Mom, Suzette Jackson, has never resented the challenges and trouble that came with raising very active twin boys. These boys, she makes clear, are her in vitro miracles.
Her pregnancy itself was a difficult one and after they were born, the sleepless nights were many, but Suzette has taken everything in her stride, refusing also to hire a nanny to look after them.
"Everything I do myself, with the help of my mother," she told Outlook.
After seven years of marriage and losing her fallopian tubes to two ectopic pregnancies, she is so happy for their arrival that the word 'double trouble' will never be heard in her vocabulary.
"They never slow down. They are busy bodies," the mother admits.
Three years ago, Suzette was the first Jamaican to be successfully implanted with embryos by the in vitro method. The newly-created Fertility Unit at the University Hospital of the West Indies was where it was done.
The couple, Suzette and Aaron Jackson, admit that when they had heard about the possibilities offered by fertility clinics abroad, but were not willing to go so far in trying to have children.
Instead, Suzette took into her care a four-year-old girl, Mia, now aged 11, who calls her Mom.
She said that she was ready to raise Mia and leave her inability to bear children naturally to God.
But, Aaron remembers that Suzette was really worried. "All her intention was to get a child. I told her I understood, but she was still worried."
Then, they heard that the fertility clinic had opened in Jamaica. Aaron was getting treatment, after an accident at the University Hospital, when Suzette, who had accompanied him, heard about the new Fertility Unit.
She lost no time in visiting. At the unit, she was told by fertility specialist Dr. Joseph Fredericks that in vitro would be perfectly suited for someone like her who has lost both tubes.
The cost was attractive. The entire procedure would only see them out of pocket US$5,000. This compared very well to the Unites States, where hospital costs alone were in the region of US$15,000.
Fertilised
Immediately, Suzette and Aaron began their tests and then Suzette was started on medication.
Her eggs were removed and fertilised in six weeks. They were then replaced in her womb. In one week, she was pregnant.
"Twins," Suzette comments. "That's what I got."
She happily endured nine months of "vomiting and a lot of pain". Her pregnancy was far from smooth, but eventually the boys were delivered in good health by Caesarean section on March 2, 2001.
In the room next door with Aaron were 16 nurses, doctors and other medical personnel, who were determined to be among the first to see the first Jamaican in vitro babies.
"It has been very hard but real good," the mother now says. "These boys, they are always on the go. But, they are lots of fun, lots of happiness, lots of laughter. No money can give you that."
At age three, the mother says that she is not ready for them to go to school, but others are saying that they must get used to the routine.
One of the twins cries every day, as unwilling to leave his mother as she is to part from him.
Come September, it will be back to work full-time for the businesswoman, but even then, she feels that her heart will be in the classroom with her sons.
