Graduated in Social Communication from the University of La Plata. Higher level teacher. She has been an editor for La Nueva since 2010. At LU2 Radio Bahía Blanca she has the column “Buenas buenas” and works as a creative editor. She is a specialist in covering human stories of overcoming. She is also a yoga teacher.
On a day like today, 30 years ago, Mónica Milano brought into the world, accompanied by her husband Jorge Lignac, in our city, the first babies born by assisted fertilization, a treatment suggested and guided by Dr. Bautista Pérez Ballester, whom the family never tires of remembering and paying tribute.
Lucila Jazmín and Sofía Aylén Lignac, twins who are the fruit of that unforgettable experience, are also excited and grateful, on her birthday, which they will celebrate together in Pigüé, where Sofia and her parents live.
Of those eight ovules that the doctor implanted in their mother on May 21, 1992, the treatment worked with two, the two of them! And thanks to that decision that preceded them, they are here to blow out a round number in the candles and give each other a hug.
Second day of birth at the Spanish Hospital. One in each arm, with doctors Pérez Ballester (right) and pediatrician Francisco Cardile.
“We want to pay tribute, a recognition to our beloved doctor and express the joy we feel as a family for all that he meant at the time and to this day,” said Mónica with an emotion that she can hardly contain.
“It was an endearing affection that we felt for him. He was not a person of few words, because he explained everything to us, but he was very involved in science. This is a story in which science was intertwined with love. We consider him family “, said.
The doctor was happy about the birth of the girls: he went on the radio, on television, appeared in the newspaper, always ready to publicize this achievement that could have such a positive impact on the lives of millions of people.
Jorge, horny with the girls.
“At that time, this type of practice was highly questioned by science itself and by religion. When they were born, we did not want to expose the twins, but a note was published in which the doctor, with our authorization, gave the names of the girls. and told how the procedure had been,” Mónica said.
In all this time, Monica was in charge every year of sending an updated photo of the “mellis” to the doctor, who had them exposed in the office. They were her achievement. A precious trophy.
30 years have passed since that episode that marked them forever as a family and some images and sensations remain as vivid as then.
The protagonists, at 15 years old: different personality and a lot of connection.
The moment of the cesarean section, for example, is something that they will not forget.
“I remember that the operating room was filled with people, with doctors, it was all a shouting, a tremendous revelry,” Mónica confided.
How not to celebrate! Two huge, healthy girls arrived and everything was fine. The experience had been an unprecedented success in the city.
It was a full-term delivery, just as the doctor had predicted.
Lucila weighed 2,800 kg and Sofia, 3,560 kg.
A full mom: her face says it all.
Monica had gone through a pregnancy without gaining more weight than her belly. She was a full belly. A dream come true: two realities, specifically.
Why did this couple, who at that time lived in Pigüé, decide to go ahead with such an advanced treatment?
The story was like this. Mónica and Jorge met studying together at the university, they graduated from Agronomists and when they got married in 1990 they decided to go live in a town.
So, Jorge got a job at Pigüé as a plant employee of a renowned company and she as a teacher, her vocation. She had already taught classes for 8 years in Buenos Aires and then continued in Goyena and Pigüé.
One year of life. Who would have imagined that they would arrive this way?
The great desire of both when they got married – at the age of 28 – was to start a family and have children.
However, two and a half years later, Monica still had not gotten pregnant and that was beginning to cause them concern and anguish.
“It was then that a colleague of mine from Goyena, knowing my concern, told me: why don’t you go see my brother-in-law in Bahía Blanca, Pérez Ballester, who is a gynecologist and is also dealing with these issues? And so we did.” he remembered.
After several studies, the doctor found no problem with them. The diagnosis was infertility without apparent causes and they had to continue doing studies to determine what was happening.
In this photo there are three! Camila arrived a year after the twins were born, in a spontaneous pregnancy.
Suddenly, one Sunday, the doctor contacted the couple to tell them that he was going to do his first series of assisted fertilization. The test already had nine couples who had been advising with him and they could be number ten.
Although, in principle, the doctor had ruled them out for not finding the causes of infertility, then a colleague warned him that this couple was precisely the one who could take advantage of this possibility.
“He explained to us that since I was 30 years old, although I could continue waiting and do studies until I got pregnant, I could also opt for this option. With my husband we said why not?”, she commented.
Here the news of the birth that shocked the field of local science.
The result? Two rosy girls who today, 30 years later, are two women and professionals and happy for the original story that gave them existence and made them sisters.
“At the time we didn’t think about it too much. We said we do it, and we did it. When they told us they were twins we never thought about the job it would be, nor did we feel afraid, nothing, nothing. We were so so so happy. It was a very special moment “, the mother remarked.
Perhaps because the experience was so gratifying, the following year, in June 1994, Monica became pregnant again, this time spontaneously. And Camila arrived, also received with great joy. It would almost be said that they raised triplets.
When the twins turned 10, they decided to tell their story in the first person.
“Today they are healthy, happy, studious and good women, who did not give us work at all. With my husband, we both mothered and fathered together and what we lived with great love and affection was wonderful,” said the mother.
Sofía studied Public Relations in Mar del Plata and works from Pigüé for a renowned international firm and Lucila studied Medicine in Bahía Blanca and is doing a residency in Otorhinolaryngology.
“Pérez Ballester would be proud of them and surely he is seeing them from heaven,” she said, shocked.
“This is our recognition from the happiness we have, to the doctor who was our friend, our doctor, our family. I miss him terribly,” he said.
The farewell to a very human “man of science”
Monica had the opportunity to fire him a few days before his death. She called him to check on her and he attended her in her office. The doctor suffered from Parkinson’s and that meeting was as if both of you knew it would be the last. They hugged, they cried. They told each other all the love they had from the wonderful experience they had shared. The doctor stopped being a doctor for a while and was able to show his sensitivity, his humanity.
“This was a Friday and the following Monday I found out that he had passed away. I had the privilege of being among the last patients he attended,” said Mónica, who treasures a photo in which she is with the twins together with Pérez Ballester and pediatrician Francisco Cardile.
“He was a man of science, everything he earned was invested in appliances, he was always one step ahead,” he said.
Family travel! They are very united.
The family also mentioned the warmth of Lady García de Rocano, their secretary: “every time we went to the office we gave each other a brotherly hug.”
The mellis are not the classic “drops of water: “We do not have excellent”
Today the twins will celebrate their 30th birthday in a hall in Pigüé, the city where Sofía, Camila and their parents live.
Lucila is in her third year of residency at the Durán Hospital in Buenos Aires.
Mónica retired as a teacher and Jorge works as a farm adviser in Pigüé and the area.
“We always live everything in a very natural way, as a girl we knew it, we never lived it as something rare or as something that was not so common,” said Sofía.
Sisters be united: here accompanying Sofi when she received her degree. They look like triplets.
“Sometimes people would ask us: were your grandparents or grandmothers twins? And then we would tell them that we had been born by assisted fertilization,” she said.
The “mellis” always went to separate grades and developed very different personalities. Lucila is more calm and rational and Sofía is more extroverted and more impulsive.
“We complement each other very well and get along excellently. We are super different. We never wanted to look alike or seek to be totally different. It just happened naturally. We are also different physically: one taller than the other, different eye and hair color, different build Sofi said.
Always together for the festivities!
Because they were the same age, they always spent a lot of time together: they shared schedules, school, friends, and activities.
Sofia has few memories of Dr. Pérez Ballester because she was 10 years old when he died, but one was recorded.
“I remember that he passed away in December 2003 and the following year a tribute was made. There were many families sitting with small children of the same age. That is, you saw the mother, the father and three or four little children of the same age. Sure, they were triplets or quadruplets,” he said.
Lucila said that the relationship with her sister is very special, because of everything they have had to share.
“When we finished school it was difficult to separate, we were used to being very close. It was very difficult, at least for me, but it was a good thing,” she said.
“We talk about everything, we have a lot of confidence and there is a great connection,” he said.
The twins star in a story that has been written for three decades and that will continue to shower love on the next generations.
