Embryo Culture: Making Babies in the Twenty-First Century

In 1978, there was one successful in-vitro fertilization baby; less than 30 years later, "more than a million" IVF children have been born worldwide. Kohl, mother of three IVF babies, has wrestled with the questions people contemplating or experiencing IVF suffer through ("Are science-babies exactly like the traditional kind?"; "How far should we go to ensure that our investment of time, emotion, and money yield a healthy baby?"; "So who am I to tinker with God's Plan and/or Mother Nature?") and the dilemmas associated with multifetal pregnancies and frozen embryos. While leading the reader step-by- step in a leisurely meander through her own successful experience, Kohl informs the naïve ("Ovaries are a woman's primary reproductive organs and the warehouse for her lifetime supply of eggs"), shares the physical ("I inject Lupron into my thigh"), drops in the technical and statistical, addresses public policy issues ("how public schools... accommodate these children, some of whom have special needs as a result of their low-birth weights") and enters the religious and political debates concerning artificial reproductive therapy. In this insightful and honest narrative, Kohl shares her experience and offers comfort and companionship for readers dealing with physical challenges, personal and marital stress, and ambivalent answers to heavy questions. (Aug.)