Jennifer Berney - The Other Mothers: Two Womens Journey to Find the Family That Was Always Theirs

I was twelve years old when I first heard the term test-tube baby when my brain, for the first time, reckoned with the idea that doctors and outsiders could have a hand in conception, that one man and one woman sharing a bed was not the only way to make a child.

I heard the term test-tube baby while sitting cross-legged on the floor of my fifth-grade classroom. That year was my first at a small Quaker school where we called our teachers by their first names, held silent worship every Tuesday, and learned things they didnt teach in public school. We read books on civil rights, studied the history of nuclear armament, and sang songs by Pete Seeger. It was the year I cut my bangs too short and wore a painters cap to hide them, the year I checked for new zits each time I looked in the mirror, the year that I looked on as boys and girls began to pair off with each other. It was the year that after lunch on Wednesdays, our teachers gathered us in a circle to teach us about sex and the human body.

In my memory, the scene unfolds like this:

Helen, one of our teachers, stands at the front of the class and lectures about reproduction. Shes a short, round woman with kind eyes and a head of untamed black curls. There are times when Helen is casual and fun, but today she is all business; she wears a collared shirt and points at the board with a fresh piece of chalk. She uses words weve already learned from xeroxed handouts: testicles , vas deferens , urethra , ovary , ovum , follicle . She uses the words penis and vagina . She is talking about sex. She calls it intercourse . We know better than to laugh. Laughter would invite a lecture on how all parts of the body are natural and fine. Wed prefer that Helen moves on as quickly as possible.

Helen moves on. She asks what we know about other methods of conception. Other methods. We continue our stunned silence for a moment, until one boy raises his hand and blurts out, Test-tube babies! The class erupts in laughter, not so much because its funny but because weve been holding our composure, and he has given us an opportunity to let it go. And, really, it is a little funny: the idea of babies popping out of test tubes.

Helen is patient. She waits for us to settle. She may even be hiding a smile. She proceeds to correct his language, to clarify that hes referring to in vitro fertilization, that the process happens in a lab with microscopes and petri dishes, not actual test tubes, that an embryo is created outside of the body and then introduced to a mothers womb. Maybe she goes on to discuss other modes of assisted reproduction, but I dont know because the scene fades out for me right there.

What remains is the phrase test-tube baby, which became an image that lingered in my memory for years, like a thing I could reach out and grab.

At that time, I didnt learn anything about the original test-tube babies, like that they were conceived in Oldham, England, or that they were no longer babies but children. Louise Joy Brown, the very first test-tube baby, was conceived the same year I was born. The story of her conception goes like this: One day in November, Dr. Patrick Steptoe made an incision and, with a laparoscope, retrieved an egg from Mrs. Lesley Browna woman who, at only twenty-nine, had been trying to conceive for nearly a decade. Seven years earlier, shed undergone surgery to treat blocked fallopian tubes, but her organs remained damaged and scarred.

Lesley Browns husband John reported that their continued failure to conceive had pushed her into a severe depression and strained their marriage. Mr. Brown himself was veritably fertile, so while Dr. Steptoe retrieved the egg, a second doctor, Dr. Robert Edwards, prepared a sample of Mr. Browns semen. With a pipette, a microscope, and a petri dish, Edwards introduced the sperm to the egg. He kept everything warm. He kept watch, waiting for the egg cell to cleave. Lesley Brown waited. Somewhere on the clinic grounds, among the dozens of other hopeful women undergoing similar treatments, she passed the hours. By the evening of the second day, cleavage had taken place. The egg had transformed into a two-celled zygote.

On the afternoon of the third day, Dr. Edwards and Dr. Steptoe waited some more, watching over the growing cluster of cells as daylight faded. There were two cells, then four, then six. They were waiting for eighta number that indicated a viable embryo. This took time. Dr. Steptoe left for dinner. It was his wifes birthday, and they wanted to celebrate. When they returned, Dr. Edwardss wife had joined him at the clinic. Both couples sat together in the lab, talking into the night like kin, as the cells cleaved once more and became eight. They fetched Lesley Brown. It was after midnight then.

To place the embryo inside of Lesley Brown required no incision, only a cannula, syringe, and forceps. In expelling the embryo into her cervical canal, Dr. Edwards returned her egg transformednot a single cell, but a living, growing thing. Together, these doctors accomplished in their lab what most often happens under blankets (or sometimes in an open field, or the back seat of a car).