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The Sewickley
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17 Gateway Publications
SUBURBAN PITTSBURGH’S LARGEST CIRCULATION
Vol. 82 No. 19
Wednesday, May 8, 1985
In Two Sections 30 Cents
SMILES worthy of the silver screen light the faces of 1985 Quaker Valley which featured the theme “Hollywood Premiere.” For all the highlights of High School prom queen Pam Fisher and her escort, Julian Kelshaw. The “opening night” see page 5 in today’s Herald.
coronation of Queen Pam was the climax of last Friday’s elegant bash,	(Photo by B.G. Shields)
A very special Mother's Day
Robin and Charles Molitor have "in vitro" twins
By Mike May
Large pink and blue bows festoon the .lamp outside the Molitor home in Sewickley Heights Manor.
Aleppo residents Robin and Charles Molitor are as effervescent as most new parents, maybe doubly so because Robin gave birth to twins—Ashley Allen
FAMILY: Charles and Robin Molitor show off Ashley and Brandon.
and Brandon Allen—on April 22.
Inside, one finds a brightly decorated nursery, lots of toys, diapers, baby bottles, and a petri dish.
This small "glass laboratory dish might seem an unusual accessory, but to the Molitors, it is a special memento: Ashley and Brandon were conceived in it.
For Robin Molitor, Mother’s Day 1985 will be extra special, because it was almost the Mother’s Day that wasn’t.
Were it not for the scientific breakthrough in “in vitro” fertilization, she would never have been able to have become a mother.
The Molitor twins are “test-tube” babies, as they are commonly called, but a misnomer as Robin explains.
The public has concocted something of a Flash Gordon fantasy about the process of “in vitro” fertilization.
Only the fertilization occurs outside the mother, in a petri dish, hence the name. “Vitro” is the Latin word for glass. Following fertilization in the glass petri dish, the embryos are placed back inside the mother, where they develop just like any other baby.
The babies are not growrt in test tubes.
Since the first “test-tube” baby, Louise was born in Bristol, England, in 1978, making world headlines, many infertile couples have opted for the process.
The Molitors are talking about their experience with this miracle breakthrough in order to give hope to other infertile couples so that they, too, might become parents.
“It was our only choice,” Robin emphasized.
In November 1982, she had suffered an ectopic pregnancy, which irreparably damaged her right Fallopian tube. In December 1983, another such pregnancy irreparably damaged her left Fallopian tube.
“I was despondent at times,” she admits, “but I never gave up hope that somehow I would find a way to have a baby.”
Her obstetrician, Dr. Mary Olson, of Bellevue, told her the “in vitro” route was the only way to go.
Dr. Olson recommended the Howard and Georgeanne Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk.
This facility, the nation’s first, began the “in vitro” process several years before Magee Women’s Hospital, Pittsburgh, where the twins were born. Magee started doing “in vitro” fertilizations in October 1983.
In addition, the Norfolk hospital does about 100 such fertilizations per month, compared to Magee’s 25 per year, ac-Continucd on Page 10
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