Did you know.....
On this day in 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world's first baby to be conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF) is born at Oldham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England, to parents Lesley and Peter Brown. The healthy baby was delivered shortly before midnight by caesarean section and weighed in at five pounds, 12 ounces.
Before giving birth to Louise, Lesley Brown had suffered years of infertility due to blocked fallopian tubes. In November 1977, she underwent the then-experimental IVF procedure. A mature egg was removed from one of her ovaries and combined in a laboratory dish with her husband’s sperm to form an embryo. The embryo then was implanted into her uterus a few days later. Her IVF doctors, British gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and scientist Robert Edwards, had begun their pioneering collaboration a decade earlier. Once the media learned of the pregnancy, the Browns faced intense public scrutiny. Louise’s birth made headlines around the world and raised various legal and ethical questions.
The Browns had a second daughter, Natalie, several years later, also through IVF. In May 1999, Natalie became the first IVF baby to give birth to a child of her own. The child’s conception was natural, easing some concerns that female IVF babies would be unable to get pregnant naturally. In December 2006, Louise Brown, the original "test tube baby," gave birth to a boy, Cameron John Mullinder, who also was conceived naturally.
Today, IVF is considered a mainstream medical treatment for infertility. Hundreds of thousands of children around the world have been conceived through the procedure, in some cases with donor eggs and sperm.
The reason I posted this event is because my family was effected by this discovery....My sister had been trying to have children since she got married in 1990. After seeing a fertility specialist she was told the same thing, that her tubes were blocked & they could try this procedure.
Well after having about a dozen eggs removed, fertilized...then they tried to implant them (3 times) but no luck!!! They were down to the last 3 eggs & my sister put things on hold for a bit while she was here helping me with our mother (who at the time was in the final stages of Alzheimer's).
After mom passed my sister went back to Australia (where she & her husband are research scientists @ the University of Melbourne) & she underwent the last try, well this time they took & now I have 2 lovely nieces (Clara & Rachel).
The sad part is that mom never got to see them while see was here with us, but I know she's watching all of us from that place that was saved for her!!!
