Miracle baby gives hope to women
Published: June 18, 2005
Three-week-old Yenika Kurtzer is a special bundle of joy to many more people than her South Australian parents Bruce and Carlene.
She is the first IVF baby in Australia born from a frozen egg.
Yenika is a medical breakthrough whose very existence offers hope for women who could have eggs stored before medical treatment for diseases such as cancer that might harm their fertility, women who were concerned about early menopause and those who did not plan to have families until later in life.
Born on May 25 at the Renmark Paringa Hospital, weighing a healthy 3.16kg, Yenika was conceived after specialists at Adelaide fertility clinic Repromed collected her mother’s eggs and froze them to minus 196 degrees, later thawing an egg and fertilising it with her father’s sperm.
The resulting embryo, Yenika’s first stages, was then implanted in her mother. Normally, it is already fertilised eggs, or embryos, that are frozen and stored.
But married for nine years, the couple had tried unsuccessfully to have a child for six years and as members of the Assemblies of God church, did not want to create frozen embryos for ethical reasons.
“We don’t condemn anyone who freezes embryos but it is not something we wanted to do,” Mr Kurtzer, 35, a pastor with the church, said from the family home in Lyrup in the Riverland.
Mrs Kurtzer, 27, said: “We believe that life starts at the creation of an embryo and we did not want to delay that life.”
When the eggs were collected, a “fresh” egg was fertilised implanted and the rest frozen but the procedure did not work.
One of Mrs Kurtzer’s frozen eggs then was thawed, fertilised and implanted in a second procedure, resulting in Yenika’s birth.
Academic head of the Adelaide University fertility clinic Repromed, Professor Rob Norman, said the technique opened new horizons for women wanting IVF treatment. He warned, however, it was in the early stages of development and it was not certain how easy it would be to replicate the procedure.
“The technique is the same as IVF but, instead of adding sperm to the egg (to create an embryo), you freeze the egg first,” Professor Norman said.
In the new technique, a chemical is added to solution around the egg to stop ice crystals forming inside that would otherwise destroy the internal chromosomes. The egg then is frozen and stored.
The egg later is thawed and sperm is injected into it, creating an embryo. The embryo is grown in a solution for three to four days before being implanted in the mother.
“This way we are not creating embryos that people don’t want after they have had their families,” Professor Norman said.
“Women can bank their eggs instead. We are not sure if it will be easy to replicate but it is a sign that new technology is just around the corner.”
Professor Norman said at this stage, the chances of achieving a pregnancy were ten times higher with a frozen embryo than an egg.
Whatever the science, The Kurtzers are “thrilled”.
“It was absolutely amazing to be at the birth and we have eggs stored and plan to have more children,” Mr Kurtzer said.
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