City’s 1st Test-Tube Twins Born at Naval Hospital

The first test-tube twins conceived as part of a San Diego artificial insemination program were born Thursday at the Balboa Naval Hospital, according to doctors at the hospital and Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, where the babies were conceived.

The boy and girl were born by Caesarean section at about 9:20 a.m. to Cremia Watson, 30, and her husband, Petty Officer 1st Class Charles Watson, 34, who is stationed at the Recruit Training Command Center in San Diego.

Both children--Jeffrey, 4 pounds, 12 ounces, and Barbara, 4 pounds 10 ounces--were healthy and in excellent condition and resting in the hospital’s special care nursery, said Dr. William Heroman , director of the nursery.

Six eggs were removed from the mother’s ovaries last summer by Dr. Jeffrey S. Rakoff, director of the Scripps Clinic Fertility Center, and were fertilized with the father’s sperm in a laboratory dish, said Randy Barnhart, a Scripps Clinic spokeswoman. Three of the embryos were implanted about 72 hours after the fertilization, and two of the embryos successfully attached to the uterine wall, Barnhart said. It was the couple’s first attempt at artificial insemination.

Scripps established its in vitro fertilization program in August, 1983, and the program has produced five pregnancies, Barnhart said. Most recently, a baby girl was born Nov. 25 at University Hospital.

Three more test-tube babies conceived at the clinic, including twins, are expected to be born in June, she said.

Last year, the first test-tube triplets, two girls and a boy, were delivered three months premature at the Naval Hospital to Deborah Styles-Lusk and Petty Officer Paul Lusk, a sonar systems instructor assigned to an anti-submarine unit in San Diego.