Then and Now: Fertility Medicine- You've Come A Long Way Baby

Test tube baby. 

I was six and a half years old when the term was coined for the first baby in the world conceived and born through IVF. The term stuck in my head since I'd heard it from the news casts in 1978. That, and the name Louise Brown. Little did I know, I would be experiencing a similar journey first hand. 

July 27, 1978

Louise was the first child in the world to be conceived via in-vitro fertilization in 1977 in England. Though she was dubbed a "test tube baby", the science involved in the process actually involved a petri dish and a blown glass bubble that incubated her as an embryo. She was born in July, 1978, her conception and ultimate birth possible from the science and medical technology developed by two Englishmen: biologist Dr. Robert Edwards, and gynecologist and surgeon Dr. Patrick Steptoe. 

Louise and the glass womb that incubated her first few days life

Despite the scientific and medical miracle, I still couldn't get over that her parents named her Louise.  It was such a bland and grown up name in my 6-year-old mind for a newborn that just made history. Why not a name like Joann or Angela? Those were popular names of the pretty girls I grew up with in the 70's. It's gotta be because she was British.  In my child-like mind I was hoping when she got older that she wouldn't get teased. 

The science behind conception outside of the womb was in it's infancy in 1969 when Dr. Edwards was fertilizing human eggs ("ova") in petri dishes. What he couldn't do was get the zygote to divide and grow properly and become an embryo. By 1970, he was joined by Dr. Steptoe and with success expanded research to involved human volunteers. They were women and their husbands that had issues of some sort with fertility. The doctors' research was based on retrieving their volunteers' eggs, fertilize them in-vitro ("in glass"), and implant  them in the mothers' uteri in hopes to overcome infertility. 

Yes, you are correct to think that this was very controversial in more ways than the obvious. If you want, you can read more about that here. 

Needless to say, the research resulted in more failures than successes. Even up until Spring of 1976, they had failed to maintain a pregnancy more than five weeks.  Just months later in the Fall of 1976, Louise's mother Lesley Brown was referred to the doctors by recommendation of her own physician for failure to conceive.

Lesley had blocked fallopian tubes which meant once she ovulated, her egg entered the tube but had no chance to meet with her husband John's sperm.  In one interview it was said Lesley was desperate to do anything to have a baby. Desperate enough for someone to use unproven scientific and medical techniques to help make the hookup happen.  Dr. Edwards and Dr. Steptoe were her seemingly only hope.

The doctors were only able to maintain a total of three pregnancies, the longest for five weeks. Five weeks out of 38-42 needed to grow a baby. Only three positive pregnancies resulted from several attempts to implant embryos back to their perspective mothers.  Three women conceived and all three failed to come to term.  Lesley was trusting these men to help her conceive the baby that she's been trying for the past 9 years.  To help her keep her baby growing for 40 weeks? 

Hookups were easy-peasy for the docs. The part of the story that Lesley literally did not know about was their inability to get everything to chill and have the eggs make themselves at home. It was something they had never been able to do until they met her.  

Interesting enough, as said by Louise herself in this interview in October 2016 with Valerie Landis of Eggsperience, her mother's strong belief she was going to have the baby may have been enough to make the pregnancy progress. She had hope. The rest is now history.  

Proud parents Lesley and John Brown with baby Louise 

Currently there are an estimated 5 million+ babies worldwide that have been born via IVF since Louise was born in 1978, including her sister in 1982 and the first American IVF baby Elizabeth Carr in 1981. Most of these babies are born to parents that have mechanical obstacles to overcome. Some are because one or both in the partnership are infertile and need medicine to increase production of eggs or sperm.

Then there's me. No uterus, no problem. Just rent a womb. It's the egg production and  fetching that is going to be the challenge. We're looking at overcoming odds in territory that is often explored and challenged but has high failure rates. It's called advanced maternal age. 

As of current, results of the many of diagnostic tests I've gone through in the past couple of months, my female reproductive organs aren't doing too shabby when it comes to hormone, follicle and egg production. Heck, I wouldn't expect any less considering I was almost 31 with my last birth and got pregnant waaaaaay too easily. My paternal grandmother (by chance Louise was her middle name) had 9 pregnancies, the last at age 34. But the most fertile of them all, my maternal grandmother (middle name Wilhemina if you are wondering), was pregnant 18, maybe 19 times, the last born at age 42. 

To proceed with egg retrieval with Lesley Brown, the doctors followed her actual cycle and harvested one egg from her ovary.  The one egg that a woman normally for each cycle, two if the ovaries are wanting to be competitive. The doctors had one chance to do this right. 

Sounds a poorly laid out plan- just one egg- for a couple of docs that were diligent for years to get this right.  It's like packing one pair of underwear for a week's vacation (men!).  But they had tried for a few years to use stimulation techniques on their volunteers to mature more than one egg at a time, and succeeded in getting 4-6 eggs. However, the medications used to increase egg production sped up cycles in the uterus to already be at the sloughing phase (menstruation) by the time the egg matured enough to implant. The egg growth and uterine cycle were out of sync and the uterus could not support the egg.  This was not a workable plan in order for Lesley to conceive and bear a child. 

Obviously Dr. Edwards and Dr. Steptoe got it right because we have Louise as proof, but it was a big gamble at that day and age, as it would be now. 

Today, during IVF procedures, they are able to stimulate both ovaries to produce 5, 10, 20, even 25 eggs at a time. And they can keep the uterus, should there be one, in proper hormonal sync for embryo transfer. The challenge after retrieving sufficient quantity is to assess for quality eggs. 

Just as you have a blackberry bush laden with berries, there will be some berries that are ripe, some not. Some that are big and tasty, and some are small and barely palatable. Then consider if the bush has been around for several years, endured a few sprays of Round-up as well as machete hackings to cut them back. You're going to find a good bit of the berries that resemble squinty-eyed mutants but there is the chance that there will be a few good ones. 

Human ovaries eggs are not much different, especially when you are asking them to do something they weren't programmed. My ovaries are along the lines of that blackberry bush that has age and environmental factors working against it.  Let's not say menopause because I'm not there yet believe it or not, but things are slowing down despite a family history of super-fertility being on my side.

The plan this July is to give my ovaries a challenge of a lifetime with stimulation medications (um, injections) to see that if amongst those squinty-eyed mutants we'll find a good 5+ eggs that will pass inspection, selecting the best of the best to be transferred into my loving surrogate. 

Birth Control, Methyfolate,Omega 3's, DHEA, CoQ10, Prenatal, Aspirin, Vitamin D3,
Hawaiin  bioastin astaxanthin, Zinc, Iron, Methylated B12- all ordered by the fertility specialist

Until then, my life revolves around taking 21 pills a day. One of those pills is birth control, believe it or not, to stabilize my hormones to a controlled baseline. The other 20 are split doses from 14 various vitamins, minerals, supplements and thyroid medications. Several have antioxidant effects, some strengthen the eggs, while others help the eggs rejuvenate to their young selves, and the hope that one or two will lay the ground work to increase overall production in the ovaries. 

With all the negatives, you're asking if this seriously can be done. Yes it can. Because I believe. I believe in my team of doctors and embryologist. I believe in me, my strength, my health and drive that God gave me.  I also know that He has granted each one of these providers their talents to make this happen. 

And for Louise.... I think I was creating a double standard. After all, Sinthea isn't really a good baby name either. Like me, she grew into her name and is awfully good at living up to who she was meant to be.