Nearly three decades after Elizabeth Carr made international headlines as America’s first in-vitro baby, she is celebrating her own milestone as a mother.
Elizabeth and her husband David Comeau welcomed Trevor James Comeau at 2:05 a.m. Thursday, weighing in at 7 pounds, 12 ounces. Elizabeth, a journalist who works at Boston.com, wrote about her transition to motherhood in a front page article in the Boston Globe. She explained in the article that the public’s curiosity about her and the routine presence of journalists asking about her life prompted her to become a journalist herself.
Elizabeth Jordan Carr was the first baby born from in-vitro fertilization procedure in the United States and was delivered on December 28, 1981. Although her parents Judith and Roger were from Westminster, Mass., her parents moved to Virginia to undergo the technique at East Virginia Medical School in Norfolk with the help of Dr. Howard Jones, who has become a grandfather figure in Elizabeth’s life. He calls her on her birthday, Christmas and other important dates. She went on to graduate from Simmons College and worked for the Kennebec Journal before joining the Boston Globe’s online site.
“My family and I have often joked about what the headline would read, with fears of ‘Test-tube baby has test-tube baby’ in bold black letters across the top of a page,” Elizabeth wrote. “However, I had a normal conception and pregnancy despite my abnormal childhood. And early yesterday, my husband and I had baby boy ‘the normal way,’ proving (I hope) that I’m just like everybody else.”
Photo by jon ovington via Flickr.