India’s second test tube baby now a proud mom

MUMBAI, India – India’s second test tube baby is now a proud mother after giving birth to a healthy baby boy.

A report by the Times of India said Harsha Chawda-Shah delivered the baby boy by caesarian section on March 7 at the Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai. The doctors who attended to Shah’s delivery were the same doctors who were responsible for her birth using In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) techniques in 1986.

Harsha, now 29, together with her husband Divyapal, an accountant, regarded their infant son as a “gift from God” because he was born in the special day of Shivratri, a significant Hindu festival, Times reported. They have not decided the name of their son.

“My baby is a blessing for me and there are no words to explain what I feel at this moment,” Times of India quoted Harsha as saying in an interview.

Over the years, Harsha cultivated close ties with the doctors who helped her parents conceive her. She was born eight years after Kanupriya ‘Durga’ Agarwal, the first Indian test tube baby born in 1978.

Harsha’s mother, Mani Chawda, suffered from a tuberculosis infection that destroyed her fallopian tubes, but she and her husband were determined to have a child. She approached infertility specialist Dr. Indira Hinduja and sought her help. That paved the way for Harsha’s birth.

Despite staunch criticism from religious and conservative groups, IVF is being developed in other countries. IVF, a method where the sperm fertilizes the egg in a laboratory and not in a woman’s body, became a groundbreaking discovery in medical science after the birth of Louise Joy Brown in 1978 in London. Her birth paved the way for over 12,000 couples in UK and thousands more worldwide to conceive despite hurdling infertility issues. Gianna Catolico