French doctors reported this week that a woman who banked her ovarian tissue before sickle cell anemia treatment had a baby girl after getting her ovarian tissue transplanted back into her.

The woman, whose name has not been made public, gave birth on June 22. “Mother and baby are doing well,” Pascal Piver, MD, says in a news release.

Because she had sickle cell anemia and needed drugs to prepare for a bone marrow transplant, the woman had doctors remove and save her ovarian tissue. That had put her into menopause for two years.

The team first transplanted 10 tiny pieces of her ovarian tissue, waited three days, and then transplanted the rest of her ovarian tissue. The idea behind that two-step process is to improve the growth of new blood vessels to the transplanted ovarian tissue.

The woman became pregnant without in vitro fertilization, according to a report that Piver and colleagues presented in Amsterdam at the 25th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE).

A second patient, who had a blood vessel disease that required immune-suppressing medication, got the same surgery and, after an ectopic pregnancy, is pregnant again, Piver says.

At the ESHRE meeting, another team of researchers reported that when it comes to freezing ovarian tissue from women with cancer, a quick-freeze method appears to be better than the standard slower method — and almost as good as fresh ovarian tissue.

That finding came from a study of 15 young women with cancer who had their ovaries removed. Some of the patients had their ovarian tissue quickly frozen (a process called vitrification); others got the standard, slower freezing method.

For comparison, the researchers — who included Sherman Silber, MD, of the St. Louis Infertility Center in St. Louis — also studied nine women who got fresh ovarian tissue transplants from their identical twins.

The result: Eggs from the quickly frozen tissue were as viable as eggs from the fresh ovarian tissue, and both of those methods yielded more viable eggs than the slow-freeze method.

In 2004, researchers in the Netherlands successfully transplanted a 29-year-old woman’s ovary into her arm after she was treated for cervical cancer. They used her arm as the transplantation site because it was easy to access, and if she wanted to get pregnant, her eggs would be harvested for in vitro fertilization.

In 2005, a 24-year-old woman who had been infertile for a decade because of premature ovarian failure gave birth after receiving an ovarian transplant from her identical twin sister.

However, the American Cancer Society notes that the most common and successful method of preserving fertility in female cancer patients is to freeze embryos conceived through in vitro fertilization, using eggs harvested from the woman’s ovaries. Freezing ovarian tissue is an experimental option, according to background information on the American Cancer Society’s web site.

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*Article quoted directly from SOURCE*

After 2 unsuccessful tries at pregnancy, Amanda and Thomas Stansel are expecting sextuplets.

The Texas couple began trying for a family shortly after their 2006 wedding. Amanda, a thyroid cancer survivor and diabetic, had trouble conceiving. She turned to fertility treatments that involved stimulating her ovaries to produce eggs, followed by insemination.

Her first pregnancy produced twins, but she lost them at 18 weeks. The second pregnancy failed as well. A home pregnancy test in late March confirmed another pregnancy.

“The third time, I ended up getting these six,” said Amanda, 32, patting her belly.

Her doctor, Dr. Brian Kirshon, a Houston high-risk pregnancy specialist thinks that there will be a better outcome in she get to 28 to 30 weeks. He has managed and delivered many triplet-plus cases, including the Chukwu and Collins multiples.

Multiples have a high risk of premature birth, which contributes to a host of medical problems. The Stansel babies have an early advantage: Each is growing in its own placenta. The best scenario is for Amanda to deliver six babies weighing 2½ — 3 pounds each, Kirshon said. Even then, the children will likely spend weeks, maybe months, in neonatal intensive care.

Kirshon said Stansel now has an “85 percent chance of six healthy babies.”

If Amanda successfully delivers six living babies, she will join a small sorority of women worldwide. Estimates place the number of sextuplet births globally at less than 200 — and not all of those children survived past infancy.

In 2006, the latest year available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just 67 children nationwide were born from quintuplet (five) or larger pregnancies. Government data on sextuplets cannot be released for privacy reasons because there are so few sets.

The Dilley children, America’s first surviving sextuplets, were born in Indiana and turned 16 last month. The Gosselin six featured in the cable reality series Jon & Kate Plus Eight recently turned 5.

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She is believed to be among the oldest Canadian women to give birth.

The twin boys arrived seven weeks premature by C-section at Calgary’s Foothills Hospital Tuesday morning. The new mom is recovering in intensive care, while the twins are in the neo-natal intensive care unit.

One of the babies is breathing with the help of special equipment, while the other boy is in the special care unit. Doctors say both are doing well. The twins will be kept in hospital until they can maintain their temperature, can breathe on their own without assistance and can feed by bottle or breast all feeds.

In the last few years there has been a growing trend of older women undergoing IVF in other countries. Last year 70-year-old Rajo Devi welcomed her first baby and 70-year-old Omkari Panwar welcomed twins.

I personally don’t agree with women who give birth so late in life because I think that it robs their children of precious time with their parents late in life.

I am, however, happy that these babies are doing well.

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But the amazement quickly turned to concern after it was revealed the the 8 new babies would be joining their 6 siblings, who are all under the age 7.

Yesterday the octuplets grandma revealed that all of the babies we actually implanted and not the result of fertility drugs as previously suspected.

Today, Angela Suleman is speaking out about her daughter’s addiction to having kids saying that she conceived all 14 of her babies through in vitro fertilization. The soon-to-be busy mom isn’t married and has been fixated on being a mother since she was a teenager.

Last year, Nadya Suleman decided to have more embryos implanted, hoping to have “just one more girl,” her mother told The Los Angeles Times.

“And look what happened. Octuplets. Dear God,” Angela Suleman told the newspaper Friday.

She said she wasn’t supportive of her daughter’s decision to try to get pregnant again.

“It can’t go on any longer,” the grandmother told the AP. “She’s got six children and no husband. I was brought up the traditional way. I firmly believe in marriage. But she didn’t want to get married.”

It wasn’t clear whether the octuplets mother was ever married. Nadya is divorced but the ex-husband isn’t the babies’ father.

All 14 children were conceived using the same sperm donor.

I do not believe that this story can get any crazier… While it is not for us to judge, I want to know who thought it was ok to implant this many embryos into someone who already has done this 5 times before.

SOURCE

“It’s amazing to finally be a mother. I’ve waited for so long to have a baby of my own.

“The doctors said I was healthier than many women half my age. I’d love to have a boy.”

Rajo, from Haryana, India, gave birth to 3lb 4oz Naveen Lohan by arranged caesarean section on November 28.

She and husband Bala Ram, 72, had been trying for a baby since they married when she was 15 and he was 17.

She said:

“We thought it was not meant to be. Every passing year there was less and less chance of becoming parents.”

The couple mortgaged their crop of rice and bamboo for next year and took out high-interest loans to pay for £2,000 IVF treatment.

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SOURCE

The Dailymail has a great story about Yvonne Finlayson and husband Mark Ruston’s journey to have a baby. The couple struggled with infertility for years until they found the Sher Institute of Reproduction in Los Angeles.

The clinic, that had a good success rate with fertility treatment, suggested that Yvonne use Viagra to thicken her womb lining.

After trying many procedures, Yvonne and Mark, were willing to try anything, but they weren’t very hopeful that the treatment would work at all.

Ten days later, back in the UK, Mrs Finlayson discovered she was pregnant – with twins!

Doctors warned the couple that one of the twins was not likely to survive.

However, they both held on and were born at Wishaw General Hospital in Lanarkshire. Lewis weighed 6lb 1oz and Ava just 4lb 11oz.

Even though the couple had to sell their house to pay for the fertility treatment, which cost a staggering £23,000 in total, they say that it has been worth every penny to get their twins.

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As many as 20 test-tube babies were delivered through caesarean section at the private hospital.

The director of the hospital, Dr. S. Dhanabhagyam, did not wish to create a sensation around the feat, it was a ‘superstition’ that led to the birth of the babies.

She performed caesarean section on 12 mothers in the last stages of pregnancy to fulfil the wishes of the parents.

“All the mothers wanted their babies to be born on October 30 — an auspicious day in Tamil calendar,” Dr. Dhanabhagyam told TOI.

The day marks the start of Kandar sashti, or the six-day festival, for celebrating the Hindu god, Subrahmanya’s triumph over the demon, Sura Padman.

Of the 12 mothers, eight birthed twins.

For Dr. Dhanabhagyam, who has delivered over a 1,000 IVF babies in the past decade, it was a fulfilling moment to deliver 20 IVF babies on a single day. She performed 12 caesarean section operations nearly without a break between 5 am to 10 pm.

The mothers are between ages 35 and 51 and suffer either from lack of eggs, ovarian failure or defective fallopian tubes. All the eggs were fertilized through the now popular ICSI (intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection) technique, in which the sperm is directly injected into each egg. With their babies snuggled in their arms, unmindful of the media glare, all the 12 mothers left the hospital on Tuesday.

It would have been much like an assembly line of moms waiting to give birth.

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Reverend Dr. Andrew Dutney, a reproductive technology expert in South Australia, said in one reported case, about 30 lesbians living in Adelaide, Australia, were impregnated by the sperm from one man.

Those mothers organized picnics so the children could get to know one another as siblings, thus reducing the risk for future romantic relationships.

In another case, a man’s sperm produced 29 children, all of whom were living in Adelaide. These children are unaware who their siblings are.

All of these children were born about 10 years ago, which means they will reach adolescence in a few years.

In South Australia, the law says infertility treatments are only for infertile couples or those at risk for transmitting a serious defect. Thus, gays and lesbians generally have to find donors “outside the system,” Dutney said.

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Susan Tollefsen, from Romford, east London, was sent to hospital for emergency tests on her swelling belly eight weeks ago, but was instead congratulated by the sonographer who told her she was almost 30 weeks pregnant.

She will become one of Britain’s oldest mothers when she gives birth to a baby girl, who she has already named Freya, by caesarean section next week.

Ms Tollefsen, and her partner, Nick Mayer, 46, have been trying to have a baby by IVF for several years.

The couple thought their hopes of having a baby through IVF were over when Ms Tollefsen suffered an apparent miscarriage within four weeks of two fertilised embryos being implanted at a Russian fertility clinic.

Even though she had miscarried and a blood test and home pregnancy test appeared to confirm this by showing negative, the mom to be believes that she was carrying twins the other survived. Related Articles:

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SOURCE

His research has led to the first live births of mice from sperm created in the lab. His team has already produced live mice generated from sperm that was grown out of embryonic stem cells. It was a major step forward, but a sperm cell from an embryonic stem cell would still not give an infertile man a biological tie to his child. It wouldn’t be any different than using donor sperm from a sperm bank, which has been done for years. To give a man a biological tie, Engel’s team is now generating sperm from very early germ cells taken from the testicles.

Engel says, “If it works in the mouse, I’m sure it will also work in the human.” Another possibility, says Engel, is to try and generate viable sperm cells using stem cells in bone marrow.

The crazy part – Engel believes that it could be possible to take early germ cells from one woman, turn them into sperm cells, and use those to fertilize the egg of another woman.

Says Engel, “It’s very nice to have a woman and to have a man … but it might be possible in the future, perhaps you are able to get a child from two women.”

Controversy comes with all groundbreaking research, especially when procreation is involved. Ken Goodman, Ph.D., a philosopher from the University of Miami makes this point:

“The point at which you want to use a [lab-grown] sperm cell to actually make a baby — to reproduce a human being as part of an experiment, you hit what I think is a wall. If you are creating a human being as part of the experiment, then by definition, you can’t get consent from that human being. Research that uses stem-cell derived sperm for reproduction is not going to be ethically permissible.”

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