First U.S. test tube baby is a mom

The first woman to have been born through in-vitro fertilization in the United States became a mother herself yesterday.

Elizabeth Comeau, born Elizabeth Jordan Carr, is 28 years old and works for the Boston Globe. She looks back on her experience as one of America's most famous babies ever in this piece on Boston.com today.

"I had a normal conception and pregnancy despite my abnormal childhood. And early yesterday, my husband and I had a baby boy 'the normal way,' proving (I hope) that I’m just like everyone else," she writes.

Friends at school knew that she was an in-vitro baby (she hates the term "test tube baby" because the process involves a petri dish, not a tube). The other kids did not tease her, but some would want to sit next to her at a homecoming game since a camera was following her around.

She has been in the spotlight nearly all her life, since her birth on December 28, 1981. The photo above shows her in 2002, attending a World Infertility Month dinner at the United Nations in New York.

After marrying and taking on a new last name, she had more privacy, but wanted to come out with her story now because "If my story helps couples or families learn about in-vitro fertilization, then the loss of privacy is worthwhile," she writes.

The doctors who helped bring her into the world, Dr. Howard Jones and his wife Georgeanna, were more like grandparents to her, she says. Dr. Georgeanna Seeger Jones died in 2005.

"It really hit me that I would never be able to say thank you to her, ever," she says in the video with her article. "How do you thank somebody for bringing you into the world? You really can't."

She also notes that the pope still disapproves of IVF and so, in a sense, disapproves of her existence.

"If I ever get a chance to meet him and talk with him, I'd try to set him straight, I think," she says.