by Amber Hilton

Created on: April 08, 2007   Last Updated: April 25, 2007

Tens of millions of babies are conceived every year by parents who don't want them. Thus, it is saddening and frustrating when a couple that is desperate for a child to call their own cannot conceive by nature means. Statistics suggest that roughly 6.1 million people in the United States struggle with infertility. However, advances in medical science that have taken place in the past few decades have made it possible for many of these people to conceive.

Specialists now have methods to restore fertility and various technologies to assist in reproduction. Assisted reproductive technology (ART) has revolutionized the treatment of fertility and is responsible for thousands of births in the United States each year. In vitro fertilization (IVF) is one of the most common and most effective ART techniques.

The first successful IVF birth in the United States was in 1981. Since this initial success, it has been estimated that more than 250,000 babies have been born as a direct result of in vitro fertilization. Louise Brown was the very first baby conceived via IVF. She was born in England and died in 2003 at the tender age of 25.

Children conceived using IVF have often been referred to as "test tube babies" because of the rather clinical way in which they are created. The in vitro process includes harvesting mature eggs from a female and fertilizing them with a man's sperm in a laboratory dish. The eggs are surgically removed from a woman's ovary with the guidance of ultrasound (I don't think I need to explain how the sperm are "harvested"). The eggs will sit for 40 hours before being examined to see if fertilization has taken place and to ensure that they are properly dividing into cells. The eggs, which have now been promoted to embryos, will be incubated and observed for several days.

Three to five days after the embryos are fertilized, they are implanted in the uterus where they will develop naturally as any other fetus would. This technique completely rules out any need for the fallopian tubes where the fertilization process would normally take place. Typically, 2-4 embryos are placed in a woman's uterus at a time. This increases her chance of becoming impregnated, but also increases the risk of multiple pregnancies, which can result in complications. Of all the women who give birth as a result of in vitro fertilization, 63% are single births, 32% are twins, and 5% are triplets or more. Each attempt at implanting embryos is called a cycle.

IVF is often the first technique

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