Israel’s first–and the world’s fifth — test tube baby born from a frozen embryo was successfully delivered at Sheba Government Hospital in Tel Hashomer Friday. The mother, 30-year-old Nilli Arad, and her six-pound, five-ounce daughter were reported doing “extremely well” by Dr. Shlomo Mashiach, who delivered the child by Caeserian section.
Mashiach, who heads Sheba Hospital’s obstetrics department, noted that Israel is only the thrid country in which a frozen embryo was successfully transplanted into the mother. The four other births occurred in Melbourne, Australia, and Cambridge, England.
Nilli Arad and her husband, Zvi, had been trying for seven years to have a child. Various fertility procedures and on earlier attempt to implant a frozen embryo failed.
Mashiach explained that the embryos, raised in test tubes from newly fertilized eggs, are frozen slowly under computer control to a temperature of minus 180 degrees Celsius. After that, they are kept in liquid nitrogen for as long as required.
Nilli Arad’s embryo was in deep freeze for a month before it was implanted in her womb.
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