Radiolab - Gonads: Fronads

Episode Date: June 23, 2018

At 28 years old, Annie Dauer was living a full life. She had a job she loved as a highschool PE teacher, a big family who lived nearby, and a serious boyfriend. Then, cancer struck. Annie would come to find out she had Stage 4 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. It was so aggressive, there was a real chance she might die. Her oncologists wanted her to start treatment immediately. Like, end-of-the-week immediately. But before Annie started treatment, she walked out of the doctor’s office and crossed the street to see a fertility doctor doing an experimental procedure that sounded like science fiction: ovary freezing. Further ReadingA medical case report on Annie’s frozen ovariesWhat’s primordial germ cells got to do with it? This episode was reported by Molly Webster, and produced by Pat Walters. With original music and scoring by Dylan Keefe and Alex Overington. The Gonads theme was written, performed, and produced by Majel Connery and Alex Overington. Additional production by Rachael Cusick, and editing by Jad Abumrad. Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. And the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y.

C. See? Yeah. It's GONAD time. This is GONADS episode two. GONAGO. I'm Molly Webster. Okay.

My dashboard says it's 12 degrees outside. Okay, so in January, I went to Erie, Pennsylvania. Second attempt at Erie. First attempt was snowed out, but on the New York side. Thank you, bomb cyclone. It was like the Arctic winters of my youth. Is there ice fishermen out on the lake? There was like some sort of record-setting snowfall in Erie that I'm sure is probably still melting up there.

And I had landed in this frozen land to do a story about people freezing things. Oh. But not things that you would expect to be frozen. I don't know what you expect out of frozenness, but it's not that. Tofoody cuties. Ice cream. That's what I freeze. Oh, my gosh.

Blueberries. Not fruit, but actual body parts. Ooh. I like it. It starts at this house. We're going to the house. Here we are. Hi.

And the people who were at the center of the freezing. We're this couple. My name is Anne Dower. That's one half. My name's Greg. I'm Annie's husband. That's the other half. I think that's it, right?

Yeah. Okay. Let's start at the beginning. So that's a crazy story. I think I'm sure Ann probably told you that. What's your version? Fall 1999. I was teaching high school phys ed.

It was a Friday. She had just finished coaching volleyball and her dad called and he said, hey, I'm leaving work early. I'm going to go to this fish fry. I will swing by and pick you up. Let's go grab some dives. dinner. I'm like, sure. He goes, I'll be over in about 15 minutes. I said, okay. And he goes, hey, it wouldn't hurt to look a little nice. And he puts the phone down. And I'm like, ew.

You know, like, because I was literally in like a Nike outfit with my sneakers because I teach gym and I just finished coaching. So like, I'm like, and that's how I would have gone to dinner with them because it's dinner with my dad, whatever. But her dad had ulterior motives. Oh, there's a guy that I work with going to meet us. And I'm like, ah, you sat me up. So we're driving over there. I'm like, how old is this guy? Like 50, 60 years old? like your age, like, how old is he? You know, and he's like, and honestly, he's just like, and honestly, he's like, he's not that old. He's maybe a little older than you.

So they get to the bar, grab a couple of beers, and then this guy walks over. Oh, that guy's not bad looking. This, of course, was Greg. We sat down at a booth, ate dinner, and by the end of dinner, and he's thinking, yeah, he's pretty cool. We just had a lot of fun together. And so one date leads to two, two leads to three. At that point, they ditch your dad because he had still been hanging out with him. And a year later, things had gotten pretty.

serious. We still have that placeman. In fact, I was looking at it the other day. It's on the kitchen. Get it on the... What is it? A placemat is coming out. Describe it to our listeners. Right. White scalloped edges. Some yellow food stains. Probably a little mustard. This placemat is from a date that they went on around their one-year anniversary, which was almost 20 years ago. Texas Roadhouse, right? I think it was a Texas Roadhouse. Texas Roadhouse, yeah. Or, Chili is one of the two because we used to go to Chile's. No, it was Texas Roadhouse.

Texas Roadhouse. Because they had peanuts. They had great peanuts, sir. They had only been dating for a year, but they were super into each other. So at a certain point, they're eating their peanuts or whatever, and the conversation turns to the future. It's like, say we're going to be together. What do you want? What do you imagine?

And we just kind of were talking about all sorts of things, like kind of a little, almost a goal setting that we had. Like, how much would you want to make? You know, just real casual. Where do you want to live? We both really like Florida. We like the climate. We put on there, I think, something like we wanted to be in Florida in 2005.

And then before you know it, they're jotting down children. Kids, like how many kids they'd want to have together? Two kids, at least. We both agreed on that. Greg had already expressed at some point that family was super important to him. He loved having brothers and sisters. And he felt the same way. Like, we went to Christmas Eve this past Christmas, and I think there was 45 people there.

That was all family. But it's like, they don't write down. that they just want to have kids. They start writing down. Like names and stuff like that, you know. Jack Dauer, Jimmy, Tyler, Jake, Joseph, Joey. These were all names. We were throwing around boys' names.

And then we had for girls, Taylor, Madeline, Bobby, with an eye, because his dad's name was Robert. And then they wrote their own names down on it. And he signed it and I signed it with the date. I just want to say, guys, this doesn't seem casual. No. Pretty intense, right? Casual dinner.

We covered it all. Your definition of casual and mine are very different. Totally. A few months after that date, they go on one of their first big trips together. To the Super Bowl. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to Super Bowl 35. In Tampa Bay and the morning of the Super Bowl.

We were laying in the hotel room and I woke up and I felt like She had this feeling of a weight on her chest Like a hundred pound weight sitting on my chest Like I couldn't catch my breath And I was like something's wrong So they come back from the Super Bowl They go to the doctor

A doctor runs a bunch of tests And then a week later they go back And they were like You want the good news or the bad news And I was like the bad news and they're like, it's cancer. And I was like, okay. Not good.

It turns out she had this pretty big tumor, like right down her breastplate, like where your rib cage meets, like right over your heart and lungs. How big are we talking about? Grapefruit sized. Whoa. You know, you think cancer and you immediately think you're dying or you're going to die. But her doctor said, good news is that it's Hodgkin's lymphoma, and it has a cure rate of like 95%. She said that the doctor,

literally was like, it's fine. Called it a slam dunk. But it's still super scary. Any cancer is scary. And at some point, Annie finds herself sitting down with Greg and saying, you don't have to do this. You didn't sign on for this. Like, we haven't even been dating a year yet. You know, you're young.

You're a good looking guy. You can find another girl and you can be guaranteed, like, you know, a good future. And, you know, I said, run. when we got diagnosed, it was just like, boom, just like we got thrust from kind of this fast-track relationship, and we're really having fun and join each other, moving pretty quick, and then, bam, we got hit with that. So you've got to do one or two things. You either say, do I love this woman, and am I ready to go on this kind of this tough journey that's going to be ahead, or am I going to get out? It was going to have to be one or the other, right? There was no gray in that scenario.

So that's when I proposed to her. Well, okay. She says yes. And so like newly engaged, they go through this cancer treatment. And about nine months later, after all the treatment's done, she goes in for another scan. And all of the cancer is totally eradicated except for this one thumbnail-sized tumor. The grapefruit tumor I had in my chest and my spleen dissipated, but it was still there. way smaller, but it was still there, right in the middle of her chest.

And at that point, the doctor looked scared. I saw terror in his eyes. Like, he was confused. Because he was like, I gave you the normal regimen. There must be something else going on. Like, that should be gone. He didn't know what else to do. So Annie and Greg thought, we need a different doctor.

But Anne's insurance wasn't going to cover. But Greg's would. So they just decide, screw it, let's just get married right now. And so we had like this real kind of small, impromptu wedding at St. Gregory's, just our immediate family, brothers and sisters, mom and dad. Literally that was the only people invited. It was kind of somber. Because it was like, will I be alive in the year? Like, it's a big, what if? Six days later, they're in New York City with a new doctor. Dr. Carol Portlock at Sloan Kettering. And they had sent all of their test results to this doctor.

They have their first meeting. They go through another month of tests and then... She sits down, puts her glasses down. Says... Okay. I've looked over your test results and... You have stage four? Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

She goes, it's very aggressive and it's a 70% chance you're going to die. I just remember feeling like, kind of like with her words and how quick they were and kind of cold, it was kind of like, hmm, this might not turn out the way we both really, really want it to. Annie asked the doctor, how will you treat this? Doctor says it's this super intense chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, which is a very intense procedure. And then I asked her, what can I do about my fertility? And she looked at me like I had three heads, you know, like she goes,

my darling, forget the fertility. You're fighting for your life. And Annie says back to her, like, no. I want children. Like, I don't think you get it. We have a plan. I put this on a placemat. I signed it.

I'm going to beat this. You might not believe it, but I believe it. I'm having kids, and I'm having kids with Greg. And when I asked her why she was so adamant about it, she just said it was a couple of things. One, she just always really wanted to. to be a mom. That's what I wanted. I wanted to be a mom. Two, she had just married Greg, just made this promise that they could have kids together. And she felt like if she couldn't do that, she was breaking

that promise to him. Okay, so I get through it and then he's maybe not going to want to be with me anymore. Like, you know, like once I get healthy, because he's got dreams of himself individually, like separate from mine, you know, even though we're married. You know what I mean? Like, you know, kind of like a worry that like, maybe if we can't have kids, but like, we're, might break up. Not really a worry, but a thought kind of, you know, as you lay there and you're taking all the time. Well, I, you know, definitely wanted kids, you know, but I wasn't, however this goes, I'll

be, I'll be happy. And so, you know, our focus, my focus was on getting her healthy. It was interesting because whenever they talked about, like, kids or when they're, them at that time, like, trying to get through stuff, they kept. throwing their hands kind of forward where they just kept saying like like they were like tossing something in front of them they would make that gesture they would make the gesture of like of like I'm gonna I'm like throwing a ball out like your hand gestures are interesting because every time you talk about kids you're like shooting your hands out

away from your body and like putting something out there in front of you that then you can like heave yourself towards I know right I mean it's just kind of like yeah like you're like reel it in You know, it's out there and it's circulating so you can see it. I don't know. I just felt like it was hope of, there's the goal, go get it. So a portlock is like, no, I don't think you understand. Like, we need to get you in treatment right away. Like within, like, maybe a week.

And any fertility treatment would take too long. Like egg freezing takes too long. IVF, that would take weeks. But Annie is just like, come on. Anything. Give me a shot. And she just paused for about 30 seconds. And then she goes, there is a doctor across the street at Wheel Cornell.

He is a fertility specialist. He's doing a study right now. I don't know much about it. But I will make sure you have an appointment tomorrow morning. So the next morning, Annie is in this doctor's office across the street and in walks this mystery doctor. All right. The duck is in the house. He had crazy, curly black hair.

And he had a white lab coat on. I mean, he looked like a nutty professor. And I'm like, I kind of like this guy. I don't know why I like this guy, but I kind of like this guy. Do you remember when you met her? Yeah. Anne was one of the first few patients that we did the freezing for. Oh, this is our guy from episode one, Mr. Magical Gonads.

Gonads are magical organs. Yeah. Okay. We're back with the magic of the gonads. We're about to reenter the Magic Land. And he's also the guy that brings us to freezing. But first a little context. If you think about all of human history,

creating more of us required an egg and a sperm and sex, and then some magic happened and a baby popped out. But at a certain point, we started trying to figure out how to control that process. And so what starts is the freezing of reproductive parts. It all started with sperm. In the 1700s, they realized that sperm slowed down and became really sleepy when it got cold. I don't know, some sperm ended up in some snow.

I'm not sure what the story is, but that's what they saw. It wasn't until the 1950s when they actually figured out how to freeze sperm, thaw sperm, and then use that to make a real baby. And then it's like, okay, well, if we figured out sperm, that's like half the population. So what about eggs? And so they start trying to freeze eggs, but that turns out to be a lot harder because eggs are so full of liquid. So when you try and freeze them, ice crystals form and it just pierces the egg. And it's at this point sort of in the 90s that Octe walks into the room.

He was studying kind of eggs in general and fertility. And he ends up in a lab that is saying, you know, if we can't freeze eggs, maybe what we should actually do is just freeze the ovary, which is a totally different ballgame because an ovary is an entire organ. Yeah, isn't an ovary kind of a big? Well, how big is it an ovary? I mean, it's the size of like a, I don't know, a walnut. But yeah, it's not a small task.

It is still a whole organ. And that is actually what is cool about this whole thing because it is the egg factory. So if you can figure out how to freeze an ovary, you can potentially freeze thousands of eggs. And so when Annie shows up onto the scene, this was just an idea. It had never been done before, except for animals. But the idea that a handful of doctors, including Octe, had, was for women in Annie's situation, you know, let's freeze some of your ovarian tissue. And then maybe one day the technology will catch up and we can do something with it. So when Annie walked in the door, how experimental was what you were doing?

No, it was highly experimental because she was one of the first few patients. Annie comes in and he says, there's this thing. It's ovarian freezing. He goes, this is brand new. I've never successfully done this in a human. There were no pregnancies or anything. He told Annie, what I'm doing here is a shot in the dark. This is like the basketball shot all the way across the court at the buzzer. But unfortunately, this is your only option. And then she said she was basically like, okay.

He explained the process, said, you know, this is what we will try to do. You know, we can take out one of your ovaries, freeze it in liquid nitrogen. And then if you survive your cancer, which is big if at this point, and if you make it to the two-year mark, which is a big landmark for cancer survivors, we can look at re-implanting it. He just handed us his papers. He's like, sign away. So I must have signed my name. Do you remember when any of the waivers were? No.

I just signed everything. Didn't read it, just signed it. Like he could have been like, we're signing it to China and we're going to make babies like you're over there. I did not like literally, I did not like pay any attention. I just wanted a chance. Coming up, she gets that chance. And things get weird. I'm Molly Webster.

This is GONADS on Radio Lab. Stay tuned. This is Kelly Powers in El Cerito, California. Radio Lab presents GONAD. is supported in part by Science and Box, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. Additional support for Radio Lab is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. It's Molly. We're back. Picking up where we left off. It's right after getting this terrible cancer diagnosis, and Annie is in the OR, and Dr. Octay takes out one of her ovaries. Walk me through that operation. What's involved?

As far as surgeries go, it's super simple. Easy, painless. He puts her under anesthesia, and then he makes an incision in her abdomen. We go through patient's belly button with a camera, and then two little punctures along the bikini line, and we can pull the ovary out through that incision in the belly button. And then they drop it in a freezer. This is like a 45-minute outpatient procedure. Is it the kind of thing that, like, once it's done, you just walk home?

Yeah. A week later, she's at Memorial Sloan Kettering getting chemo. And the treatment is like insane. She goes through rounds of chemotherapy where she gets chemo all weekend. You know like the big Ziplocs, like the freezer bags, like the gallon? That's what they were hanging up. Filled with chemo. Nonstop.

Down one. Oh, time for another one. Down one. Up. Time for another one. Time for another one. Another one. Constant. In this kind of chemo, they kill a lot of the cells in your body.

Good cells, your bad cells, your immune cells, your stem cells, they kill everything. You're basically dead for all intents purposes. I mean, the blood counts are all bottomed out. There's nothing. Zero white, zero red, zero platelets. You're... From there, she gets a stem cell transplant, which is taking your blood out and putting stem cells back in.

The idea is that then she would regrow her immune system, hopefully without cancer. May 26th, I walked out of the hospital. Annie is bald. No eyelashes, no eyebrows. Super skinny. Mouth stores. It sucks. But according to the doctors, they were like, you're good.

She's cancer-free. You're clear. So when we got out, we walked to the park. Got a slice. Park pizza, which is the greatest pizza ever. The sun was shining and horns honking. And it was New York. Like, it was like, I stepped outside and I was like,

I'm alive again. Like, this is life. But there was a pretty good chance that the cancer could come back. So she and Greg go home and wait. One month goes by, two. That placemat was just, like, you know, hanging, like on the fridge, front and center, like, floating there. Three months, four. I would think about the cancer most of the day, where it was like, is it going to be?

to come back. Where is it? Five, six. A year goes by, then 18 months. Still no cancer. When did you first have the ovary reenter your mind? Well, it started to, I went May 13 of 2004, you know, the two year mark. They did a pet scan, blood work, all that, and I was clear. And that day, I went and saw Octet. You just walked across the street. I did. I was like, I told him I was going to be there. And what you'll remember is the last time she talked to Octay, the deal was, get to the two-year mark.

If you get to the two-year mark, give me a call. I have no idea where we'll be at with this technology then. No idea if I'm going to be able to give you a baby, but we'll see. Now, in that interim period in those two years, Octay had been continuing to experiment, working with other patients taking thawed tissue and putting it back in them. but not where you'd expect. Yeah, originally we did this in the forearm. What?

Like right under my watch, like on my forearm? Yes, correct. It would just take it and stick it in the muscle in the forearm. An ovary in the forearm? Yeah. How does that even make sense? Well, it makes sense because this is how crazy weird like an ovary is. You can put it literally anywhere in the body that has good blood supply.

And in the next three to ten days, new blood vessels form. So it just pops on? Correct. But then how do you get a baby out of an ovary that's in your forearm? Oh, so the idea is that you could just, you know, sort of pluck the mature eggs out from just underneath the skin. And then you could combine them with a sperm and a petri dish and just do normal IVF, where you'd make a embryo in a petri dish and then implant it. Gotcha. But by the time Annie walked in, no one had done this and gotten it to work.

There had yet to be a baby born from an ovarian transplant. When Annie showed up, though, Octay was ready. He said, I'm going to take the 21-inch strips. These little bits of her ovary that had been frozen for two years. And we're going to suture them right underneath your belly button and your stomach. Wow. Wait, why there? Well, he put prior to me, he had put a few in a woman's rear end.

No. Really? It actually wasn't him that did that, but rumor on the street is that there's an ovary on a butt somewhere. But he felt that putting it closest to where the other ovary is and where its original spot was was probably the most beneficial. And he goes, hopefully within two months, you'll get a menstruation cycle. And he goes, and then you'll come out of menopause. Because remember that chemo would have shut down that remaining ovary and put her into full on menopause? We don't know. It's not a guarantee. We just got to see.

So Octe does the procedure again. It's super simply implants of, bits of ovaring the skin next to her belly button. And two months later, started to feel the first little marbles. Down around her belly button, she had these lumps. I don't know how to describe it, but like under the skin, can actually like kind of grab it. And you had always say, you know, put your, put your finger right here because you can feel them and, you know, certain times of the month, it would get, it would get bigger. Huge eggs on the skin. It was really weird. I mean, I'd have all different things. sizes, like sometimes less than dime, sometimes as big as a quarter.

It just feels like if you rub your finger across, almost like just a bigger version of kind of like, you know, they have like the braille and the elevators. We would go to New York and Octet would actually measure them. It was interesting. Like a measuring tape and like put like marks on, and he'd like measure the circumference. He'd be like, great, that's a good size. And Annie says they hurt. I mean, I couldn't buckle my jeans because the buckle, like the button on the jeans would hurt.

pressing against the skin because they were sticking out, you know? To elastic pants? It was like real pretty, you know. So about a month after the Marble show up, they fly down to New York City for a series of appointments. First, a cancer checkup, they get a pet scan. Next day, they go see Octae. And that's when all these interested things beginning to happen. Annie's on the exam table.

He starts to do an ultrasound, which is always so uncomfortable. And then all of a sudden, Octay says, oh my God, oh my God. And I think I almost passed out. And I'm like, is everything okay? He's like, this can't be. This can't happen. And I'm looking at him and I'm like, Dr. Octet, what is wrong? He's like, hold on.

He kept looking at the monitor and doing all the stuff. I said, what can't be? He goes, you're pregnant. What? Yeah. It was just a. An unbelievable moment. I was like, I'm pregnant?

No. You know, am I looking at the right patient? Take a look at the charts again. Wait, she's pregnant. What does that mean? I mean, no one really knows what it means. It means that there are eggs that are protruding out of her skin, and yet somehow there's also an embryo in her uterus.

I said, how? He who's the old-fashioned way, sweetheart. But Annie was like, no, no, really, how? You know, what? I don't understand. He's like, I don't know. And then he's like, wait. I'm trying to find a heartbeat.

It turns out. There was no heartbeat. It's not viable. Oh, fuck. And it goes on from there. They get into the car. Phone rings. It's Dr. Moskowitz from Sloan.

I'm like, shit. Like, why is he calling us? The shoe's going to drop. The cancer's back, right? Because we just had the pet scan. like literally the day before. So she picks up the phone. I'm like, everything okay?

He's like, your scans are fine. You're clear. I said, oh, okay. I thought you were calling. He goes, I know what you thought. He goes, you thought I was calling to tell you that the cancer's back and they get back to the hospital. And I was like, yeah?

And he's like, no, you're cancer free. He goes, did you know you're pregnant? And I'm like, just found out. He's like, you went to octet and I said, yep. And he goes, did you know you were pregnant before you had the pet scan? And I said, no. I said, could the pets can have killed it? He said yes.

So that was kind of hard. Kind of. You know, because it was like, shit. Wow, that is crazy whiplash. Yeah. Wait, can I just, let me just catch up here. How did this? Like, she's got marbles in her belly button.

Marbles in her belly button. And now you're saying that suddenly a baby appeared in her uterus? That's a long way away from her belly button. I don't get it. I don't get it. Like, so what did the belly button? How do, is it, what happened? That's the question.

There are so many different possible answer. Definitely something happened there. And what was that? Something. Divine intervention. I don't know. So, Acte eventually does publish two papers on this. And he raises, like, a lot of different ways this, this could happen.

In Annie's, here's maybe the thing to remember for all these explanations. Yes. So in, so if you think about Annie's body. right now. There's the one ovary that was left inside that is now defunct. Right? It's, everyone describes it as like a dead ovary. Because it's been killed by the chemo. Right. So you've got the dead ovary insider. You've got the transplant, a lower belly button in the skin, which is very much alive full of eggs. Little marbles. So to get a pregnancy, here's what might have happened. A couple different options. First, maybe one of these immature sort of egg cells,

earer belly button, slips out of the transplanted ovarian tissue. It's into the bloodstream. It's transported through the bloodstream all around the body. Into the opposite ovary. The dead one where it is like, oh, this is the place I want to be. It settles. And then in there is matured and then can be sucked up by the flopian tube had made into a baby. Correct. So biologically speaking, it's plausible. Let's remember, germ cells got to the ovary through a long migration. Remember, last episode? The Great Migration. The Great Migration.

But this would be the Great Migration times a million because it's going all around the body. Yeah. The most likely and most reasonable thing that probably happened is that the ovarian transplant in reconnecting with the body sends out its signals like, hey, hey, hey, hey, we've got some hormones. going on here. And these hormones help the other ovary wake up. Turn back on. And then if it had any remaining egg cells that were like dormant, maybe you could like rejuvenate them or get them to mature and then those could become a baby. Well, so either these eggs are going on a journey like no other or they're waking the dead. Yeah, it's two very reasonable options. That's bananas both ways.

It's like double bananas. It is. It is. is so bananas that when it happened, Octet just thought it was luck. Like maybe that ovary insider, the dead one, just had like one last egg. But a month and a half later, pregnant. Again.

In the same way? Yeah. Inter uterus. Yeah. Like, holy crap. My body healed enough I could actually achieve a pregnancy without intervention. And so September 25th. 2005, Sienna Ann Dower was born.

A healthy baby weighing 8 pounds, 6 ounces. The first baby ever born in the U.S. of an ovarian transplant. Even though the chances of conceiving a child was unthinkable. Like 1 in 5 million. Greg and Ann Dauer gave birth to a miracle baby. The end result is awesome. We got a beautiful baby girl. Greg, Annie, Octay.

Dr. Kutluck, Oak Ty. Little baby, Sienna, hit the road on a media blitz. She is now the mother of a bouncing baby girl, the first ever to be born in the U.S., by using this particular technological breakthrough. So that happens. And then three years later, pregnant.

It happened again with Little Greg. Same thing, the old-fashioned way? Yes. And at this point, they're like, we're good. We had a girl, a boy, they were healthy, no issues, thank God. They felt like we've executed the dream of the placemat. No intention of having another one. Like, zero.

But four months later, pregnant. Again. Three babies back to back to back. I mean, how do you become super fertile after being in clinical menopause for two years? Does he still think that Annie and Greg got lucky that this was kind of a one-off? No, because since Sienna was born, we've had many more babies born from this procedure. As we stand now, there are perhaps over 100 babies born all around the world. And it's no longer like just happening within the fertility community.

I bumped into doctors that are experimenting, using it with women who are going into menopause, an ovarian patch that will inject hormones to delay menopause. The other place where I bumped into it is in the trans community, where kids who are transitioning from female to male are opting to or their parents are choosing to freeze their ovary. So they have a chance of possibly having biological kids if they want to do that. So it is cool because you have this feeling of,

like when I was standing in the room with Annie, I kept having this feeling of, you just feel like really close to some sort of power, like maybe because it's an, which is kind of ridiculous because I have this power too, right? I have ovaries. But them being outside the body and like, like she said, kind of like sci-fi experiment. It's just like humans are marching towards this moment of just like regulating every part of the human process. But then almost as quickly as you have that thought, you realize it's 13 years later. You have these kids running around. around, and the Octet still doesn't really understand what happened.

Hi, this is Molly. I'm Molly. I don't know if anyone does. How are you? What are you working on? My science fair project. What is this? I didn't even know you had this, Mom.

They're just now getting to the age to where we talk to them about it. And we showed some of the tapes. And we showed her some of the footage from being on the Today Show. I've seen this picture before. So, because if you search up my name on Google, I searched up my name, and this picture came up in a bunch of other ones of me as a baby. Wait, what is this you guys have? You have a whole magazine. The world's best, the world's most amazing baby. With her 10 cute fingers and her 10 cute toes.

This is Greg, baby number two. And our is not just another adorable newborn. She is a miracle of... And baby number three, Kate, was feeling a little overlooked. Why is everything signed a Sienna? Like, this magazine has Sienna. She was the first baby that was born in ovarian tissue transplant. You guys are number two and three in the country.

Ten cute fingers and ten cute toes. This episode, was reported by me, Molly Webster, and produced by Pat Walters. With original music and scoring by Dylan Keefe, the GONADS theme is written, performed, and produced by Major Connery and Alex Overrington. Radio Lab presents GONADS is Rachel Cusick, Pat Walters, Jad, Abumrad, and Molly Webster. So in the last couple of weeks, we teamed up with the website romper.com to turn some Radio Lab listener stories about trying to conceive into this web special.

There's a lot of different perspectives. You should totally check it out. It's over at romper.com slash trying. Plus, I was on the bustle huddle talking about what it's like to be 35 and whether or not there's really a reproductive cliff. Check it out at romper.com slash trying or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Izana, calling from London. Radio Lab was created by Jad Abramrad and is produced by Soren Wheeler. Dylan Keith is our director of sales. sound design. Maria Matasar Padilla is our managing director. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Maggie Bartolomeo, Becca Bresla, Rachel Cusick, David Gable, Bethel Houty, Tracy Hunt, Matt Kilty, Robert Krollwich, Annie McCuwen, Latif Nassau, Melissa O'Donnell, Marianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. With help from Shima, Oliahi, Carter Hodge and Lisa

Yeager, our fact checker is Michelle Harris.