The first ever successful in vitro fertilization, or IVF procedure, was performed in 1978 and culminated with the birth of a child,

who is now a woman named Luis Brown. Luis's story caused a media uproar at the time. It probably

didn't help that many members of the press began to refer to her as a test tube baby, a label that was

totally incorrect, by the way. She was conceived in a petri dish, which is where the term

in vitro comes from. It's Latin for in glass. But having a sperm and an egg meet in a petri dish instead of in a mother's

flopian tubes. And another fun fact here, fertilization of an egg by a sperm, usually takes

place in the third portion of the flopian tube, which is called the ampula, which is Latin for

flask. That doesn't change much of the other mechanics of the process.

After fertilization occurs, the fertilized egg grows for a few days in an embryo culture, a substance

made of either cells from the mother's uterine wall or an artificial approximation of the same.

And after that, the fertilized egg,

also called a zygote, is transferred either into its mother's uterus or the uterus of another

woman, who will serve as the surrogate, the person who will carry it to term.

Now, thankfully, despite the hubbub of concern over what would happen to this child who was born

in what many considered to be a wildly unnatural way, she turned out just fine and went on to

have kids of her own without using IVF. Her sister, who was also a product of IVF, also a quote-unquote test tube baby,

had her own kids as well, Sands IVF. In the decades since, this procedure has been

evolved and augmented in many different ways and is now better understood, as are the

potential complications that can arise from it. And there are potential

complications, including locally relevant things, like an increased chance of gestational diabetes

or a low birth weight in the child, and hypertensive disorders like preeclampsia and the mother.

And there are also statistically relevant

...