...By Enitan Thompson for TDPel Media.
Brooke Martin, a mental health worker from Texas, US, who opted for IVF treatment in her late 20s with husband Chris, had twin boys Christopher and Matthew, 22, after being implanted with two fertilised embryos.
Brooke received a call from the fertility clinic asking what she would like to do with the other eight fertilised embryos.
Brooke and Chris decided to donate them instead of letting the embryos thaw out or sent to science for research.
They later discovered through 23andme that they had triplets, Lauren, Thomas, and Peter Monroe, 20.
Embryo donation: A personal story
Brooke and Chris wished that they were given the option to know what happened with their embryos from the start.
When they donated their embryos back in 2000, they were not allowed to know what happened to the embryos nor were they able to choose who they would go to.
Brooke is now on a mission to be a voice for embryo donation to get the word out about the wonders it can do.
She wants to encourage other women about the possibilities of the process and educate them about their rights to the embryos – something that was stripped away from Brooke at the time.
Laws regarding the prevention of identification of embryo donors were overturned by the UK government in 2005, whereas in the US, there are no “explicit laws” regarding embryo donation.
Finding her children
Brooke, now 56, admitted that she would like to find all her children.
With the possibility of having five more children out there, Brooke said: “Our faith kept us through this.
When you worry about something for 20 years, you wonder, you pray, you know, and then you realize that all this time God’s taking care of it.
And anything that I could have ever imagined was not even close to what he did, not even close.”
Brooke is still left in the dark about finding out if they are biological parents to anyone else.
Brooke and Chris met their triplets in 2021, sadly two years after mum Becky – who received Brooke’s embryos – passed away.
