Word: bourn
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...group of women sit quietly chatting, their heads bowed over needlepoint and knitting, in the gracious parlor at Bourn Hall. The mansion's carved stone mantelpieces, rich wood paneling and crystal chandeliers give it an air of grandeur, a reflection of the days when it was the seat of the Earl De La Warr. In the well-kept gardens behind the house, Indian women in brilliant saris float on the arms of their husbands. The verdant meadows of Cambridgeshire lie serenely in the distance. To the casual observer, this stately home could be an elegant British country hotel...
Each has come to the Bourn Hall clinic to make a final stand against a cruel and unyielding enemy: infertility. They have come from around the globe to be treated by the world-renowned team of Obstetrician Patrick Steptoe and Reproductive Physiologist Robert Edwards, the men responsible for the birth of the world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978. Many of the patients have spent more than a decade trying to conceive a child, undergoing tests and surgery and taking fertility drugs. Most have waited more than a year just to be admitted to the clinic. Some...
...years that have passed since the birth of Louise Brown, some 700 test-tube babies have been born as a result of the work done at Bourn Hall and the approximately 200 other IVF clinics that have sprung up around the world. By year's end there will be about 1,000 such infants. Among their number are 56 pairs of test-tube twins, eight sets of triplets and two sets of quads...
According to Quigley, the chances for pregnancy are best when the eggs are retrieved during the three-to four-hour period when they are fully mature. At Bourn Hall, women remain on the premises, waiting for that moment to occur. Each morning, Steptoe, now 71 and walking with a cane, arrives on the ward to check their charts. The husband of one patient describes the scene: "Looking at a woman like an astonished owl, he'll say, 'Your estrogen is rising nicely.' The diffidence is his means of defense against desperate women. They think he can get them pregnant just...