An 18-year-old woman from Anantnag has become the Valley’s first surrogate mother, bringing a smile to a couple who had lost the hope of having a baby after 13 years of marriage. Shabnum (name changed), the mother of a boy, was moved by the plight of her husband’s brother, Mohd Akbar (name changed). Akbar’s wife, doctors had said, suffered from ‘‘congenital absence of uterus’’ and was incapable of having a baby. With the help of the doctors at Srinagar’s Rotunda Hygeia, the Valley’s only fertility clinic, Shabnum conceived on December 26. ‘‘The father came to our centre with the surrogate mother,’’ said director of the centre, Dr Ruheel Nisa. ‘‘We took consent from all the parties involved and started treatment. Now, everything is going normally with the mother,’’ she said. Although this is the first-ever case of surrogate motherhood in the Valley, there have been over 26 test tube babies and cases of egg donation. Normally it is a close friend or a relative of the woman who is the egg donor. Today, two-year-old Kubra in downtown Srinagar is the oldest test tube baby in the Valley.
