Even though it has been decades since the first test tube baby was born, people are still quite curious about in vitro fertilization (IVF). While some are interested in the science, others just want to know how it works.
However, one of the most surprising things that people seem to wonder about is whether IVF babies have belly buttons. To address this confusion, Elizabeth Carr, the first IVF baby born in the United States, recently posted a video on TikTok.
Carr, who is now 44, shared the video answering some of the most common questions people have about her birth. She started by talking about the science behind IVF and how much the technology has evolved since her birth.
Carr also discussed what it’s like growing up as someone who has been seen as the face of IVF in America. In 1981 — the year she was born — IVF was still a new and scary idea, and people were worried about babies being made in labs.
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“I really feel like a big older sister to a lot of children around the world. I was born on December 28, 1981… the process of in-vitro fertilization had never been done in the United States before,” Carr said.
Her parents, Judith and Roger Carr, had struggled with infertility. She went on, “When my parents were trying to get pregnant, they figured out pretty quickly that my mother could get pregnant but not stay pregnant,” adding, “Her tubes ruptured to the point she had severe internal bleeding”.
After several miscarriages, Judith’s doctor suggested IVF as a new medical option. That’s when, Judith and Roger visited the IVF pioneers, Howard and Georgeanna Jones, for treatment.
Just hours after Carr’s birth, she and her parents were caught in a media frenzy. Carr joked about her first press conference when she was just three days old, which happened because her parents wanted to share their story as a scientific milestone.
She explained that the doctors gave her parents the option to keep her birth private, but they chose to go public. Her parents had said, “We’re just a normal couple looking to build our family like everybody else. And our child is normal and walks and talks and sounds just like every other child.”
In her TikTok video for Britannica, Carr also answered the question about whether she has a belly button. “People do actually ask me that. They think that I was grown in a tube or a lab. Test tubes were not used, a petri dish was used,” she shared.
Elizabeth Carr, the first IVF baby born in the U.S. is attending the State of the Union in support of reproductive rights in the wake of Alabama’s Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are children under state law. https://t.co/cSUckrYton pic.twitter.com/s273ODf7UF
— USA TODAY Politics (@usatodayDC) March 8, 2024
Carr talked about how IVF is used not just for infertility, but also for people who need to build families during military deployment, those undergoing cancer treatment, and LGBTQ individuals who want to have children.
She further said that she is proud to represent the progress in reproductive science, noting that about 12 million babies have been born through IVF worldwide, and that she’s happy to be part of that journey.
