I was the first IVF baby – if anything had gone wrong, the world would look different now

In 1978, the pioneering work of a British medical team brought Louise Joy Brown into the world...

and that story is now a Netflix film starring Kiwi actor Thomasin McKenzie. When Louise Joy Brown, the world’s first IVF baby , was about to be born – by planned C-section on a Tuesday night in July 1978 – the furore was so intense that the hospital in Oldham, Greater Manchester had to give her parents code names to put reporters off the scent. Twelve days later, after a battery of tests to check the newborn was “normal”, little Louise was brought home to her parents’ small terrace house in south Bristol, where hundreds of congratulatory letters awaited and crowds outside jostled for a glimpse.



“My mum hated the attention,” says Louise, now 46, speaking to me over Zoom from her home in Bristol. “She was shy, quiet, and just wanted a baby. She and my dad had been trying for nine years.

She hadn’t even known she was the first successful IVF pregnancy until quite late on, so it was a shock.” Most people were well-meaning. One member of the crowd was 7-year-old Wesley Mullinder, who would, curiously enough, go on to become Louise’s husband.

But amid religious and political unease, not everyone was friendly. Security helped Louise’s scared parents from the ambulance through the front door and newspapers all over the world veered between hailing the “ miracle baby ” and questioning the ethics of her existence..