What if scientists could help make a baby... in a laboratory dish?

The Day Scientists Made the First Test-Tube Baby!

A Tiny Miracle That Changed How Families Are Made Forever

Scientists helped create the first "test-tube baby" — now over 12 million IVF babies exist!

On June 28, 1978, something absolutely amazing happened in a hospital in England that changed science forever!

Two brilliant scientists named Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards had been working for YEARS on a super tricky problem. Some moms and dads really wanted to have babies but couldn't do it the regular way. Could science help them?

After trying over 100 times, they finally figured it out! They helped a couple named John and Lesley Brown have a baby using a brand-new technique. The scientists carefully combined a tiny egg from the mom with cells from the dad in a special glass dish in a laboratory. Then, when the teeny-tiny baby started growing, they placed it back inside the mom!

When baby Louise Joy Brown was born that summer day, she weighed 5 pounds and 12 ounces and was perfectly healthy. Newspapers called her the world's first "test-tube baby," though she actually grew in a flat dish called a Petri dish, not a tube!

💡 Louise Brown, the first IVF baby, grew up and had her own baby naturally in 2006 — proving test-tube babies are just like everyone else!