When you’re 32, have no serious romantic prospects besides the one(s) in your head, most of your close friends are getting married or having babies, and the only thing you’re sure of is that you’d like to have a baby someday too, you spend a lot of time thinking about how that’s going to happen. I am not proud of being a chick flick stereotype, believe me, but I looked in the mirror this morning and that’s what I saw and, well, time to face facts.
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Talk about a silly study. Women who have had trouble getting pregnant and have resorted to using in vitro fertilization can increase their chances of conception by spending just 15 minutes with a “medical clown.” Yeah. A medical CLOWN. Researchers studied 229 Israeli women undergoing IVF and found that those who spent a 1/4 of an hour with Bozo had a success rate of 36 percent, compared to just 20 percent of those who didn’t visit the circus (I kid). So what in the name of Barnum & Bailey is a medical clown? Apparently, you can only get a degree in this specialty in Israel, but practitioners take courses in nursing and focus on distracting patients from pain or stress using humor. This particular study likely proves that “reduced stress, caused by laughter, could increase the chance that the injected embryo will successfully make its way into the womb.” Or, um, maybe the embryo has read Stephen King’s IT one too many times? [NY Daily News] Keep reading »
How do you like your eggs? Donated! Hey, for a cool $5,000 during this recession, less periods sounds like a win-win kinda situation. And that’s why IVF donation clinics across the country claim their phones are ringing off the hook.
Ann Curry scored an interview with Nadya Suleman, the mother of the octuplets everybody’s talking about, and a portion aired this morning on the “Today” show. We thought Suleman was bats*** when we heard she already had six children, lives with her mother, and isn’t currently employed. So, when we saw how poised and together she appears in this clip, we were surprised. Supposedly, Suleman was asking $2 million for interviews. Did “Today” pay up? Who knows. Maybe she’s hoping the exposure will inspire someone to make a movie of her life. Or maybe she’s so out of touch with reality that she doesn’t even realize what it’s going to be like raising 14 children. Keep reading »
Doctors in St. Louis successfully transplanted an ovary from one twin to another who had gone into early menopause at age 15. The transplanted ovary restored the woman’s full fertility and she gave birth at 38. According to researchers writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, this is the first time an entire ovary has been transplanted and resulted in a live birth.
Dr. Sherman Silber of the Infertility Center of St. Louis said that this success could help two groups of women: those who have undergone chemotherapy and lost ovarian function, and those who want to extend the time they are fertile. For the latter group, a doctor could remove one of two ovaries when the patient is in her 20s and freeze it. Then, when she’s in her 40s, the doctor could transplant it back. Because so many women are having babies later in life, this could be away to avoid costly rounds of in vitro fertilization. Putting one ovary in the freezer might soon become as commonplace as depositing money in the bank for retirement. [Reuters] Keep reading »
Happy 30th Birthday in-vitro fertilization! That’s right, it’s a big b-day for anyone conceived via IVF, especially Louise Brown, the world’s first IVF baby. Her parents, Lesley and John, had tried for nine years to have a child (sounds like fun), when they heard about experimental fertility research being conducted at Cambridge University. Physiologist Robert Edwards and gynecologist Patrick Steptoe were pioneering the “test-tube” baby and the Brown’s volunteered to try the controversial method. Three decades later, they’re among many IVF success stories. Over the years, 115,000 babies have been born in the U.S. alone thanks to IVF and just this summer, the fertility miracle helped a 70-year old woman conceive in India! As for Louise, who works as a shipping company administrator, she is a mother herself, to a healthy 18-month-old boy, which she was able to conceive naturally. Her younger sister Natalie Brown is also a notable achievement — she was the first IVF baby to give birth and she too was able to conceive without medical aid. Needless to say, the Brown kids are so grateful to the groundbreaking scientists that they consider them to be their granddads. And thanks to them, now everyone can have eggs scrambled, sunny side up, and even fertilized! [AFP]
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Don’t you love ordering in dinner and letting the deliveryman carry all the groceries up for you? But it appears delivery girls, who carry babies, are the ones really cashing in, as surrogacy gets more popular than pizza. And at $20,000 a delivery, the tips are the best in the business! According to a Newsweek article entitled “Wombs For Rent”, advances in science over the past decade have caused the in vitro fertilization success rate to jump to 70-90%, which is an increase of nearly 40%. Although the total count of surrogate births is still debated, in 2007, it’s estimated to have risen at least 30% to possibly 1,000. And if you count movie magic, then add in SNL sisters Tina Faye and Amy Poehler, who are already starring in a spoof of this phenomenon in a film called Baby Mama which will open the Tribeca Film Festival later this month in New York. Check out the trailer above! [Yubanet] Keep reading »
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