The story of the world's second IVF mum

Grace MacDonald gave birth to Alastair MacDonald – the world's second IVF baby, and first IVF boy – at Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow in January 1979. Grace had previously been treated with experimental IVF in 1977/1978, first at a cottage hospital in Oldham and then at Oldham and District General Hospital (where the world's first IVF baby Louise Brown was born in July 1978).

The conversation with Grace that follows was conducted by Professor Martin Johnson and Dr Kay Elder, as part of their studies of the Oldham Notebooks kept by the pioneers of IVF during the 1960s and 1970s.

Grace recalls her encounters with those pioneers – Professor Sir Robert Edwards (known widely as 'Bob'), Dr Patrick Steptoe and Jean Purdy. Grace also remembers Lesley Brown (mother of Louise Brown) and the other patients who underwent experimental IVF, who were equally pioneering in their way, and who referred to themselves collectively as the 'Ovum Club'.

Grace and her son Alastair will be panel speakers at this month's free-to-attend online event Robert Edwards at 100: Remembering an IVF Visionary, taking place on Wednesday 24 September 2025. Find out more and register here.

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Martin Johnson: So, when did you meet Bob?

Grace MacDonald: It would have been 15 February 1977.

Martin Johnson: That was exactly eight years after the Nature paper was published describing the first IVF, to the day (see BioNews 1304).

Grace MacDonald: Isn't that funny?

Martin Johnson: So, February, you met Bob. And that was to go in for the first attempt, was it?

Grace MacDonald: That was the first attempt.

Martin Johnson: What was the first meeting like?

Grace MacDonald: Well, he was just so gentle and so down to earth about it, and just explained what was going to be happening. He didn't talk in technical jargon.

Kay Elder: So he wouldn't talk down to you?

Grace MacDonald: Oh, not at all.

Martin Johnson: He just talked conversationally?

Grace MacDonald: Yes. Just Bob, really.

Martin Johnson: It was reassuring?

Grace MacDonald: Oh yes.

Martin Johnson: Because you must have felt a bit tense going down there, did you?

Grace MacDonald: Yes. Just getting the train down and wondering, you know, what was going to happen.

Martin Johnson: And when did you first meet Jean Purdy?

Grace MacDonald: I didn't actually meet Jean until I had to go in on 23 February. 26 February was when the ovum was replaced but it, unfortunately, didn't work.

Martin Johnson: So, that didn't work, unfortunately? That transfer?

Grace MacDonald: That, no. I went home on 8 March, the day after my birthday. That was a great birthday present, crying my eyes out going up on the train.

Martin Johnson: So, you stayed down for the testing and so on?

Kay Elder: You stayed until you found out?

Grace MacDonald: Well, you always had to. You stayed until you either were successful, which none of us were, or until, you know, your cycle started again. So, it wasn't successful.

Martin Johnson: So, you were there from 15 February to...?

Grace MacDonald: 15 February till 8 March.

Martin Johnson: That's quite a long time, isn't it? And everyone was doing that?

Grace MacDonald: Oh, yes. That's how you got to know the girls so well, and how we became like a family. You know, because we were sharing something.

Kay Elder: But did you have a discussion with Bob or Patrick or both, just before you went home, about what had happened?

Grace MacDonald: That was actually Bob. He came and he was just so compassionate. You know, he just came in, came into the little room in Oldham and just said: 'Unfortunately, this time hasn't been successful, but that doesn't mean, you know, you can't try again.' And he was just very, very supportive.

Martin Johnson: And all of this, you weren't having to pay for any of this, presumably, no?

Grace MacDonald: No. We were so lucky.

Martin Johnson: You just had to cover the cost of your travel and your accommodation?

Grace MacDonald: We paid for all of that ourselves. But we didn't have to pay for the treatment. At that time, of course, it was out of the goodness or the foresight of Oldham. I mean, they donated the facilities, didn't they?

Kay Elder: The facilities, I guess.

Grace MacDonald: But I know that Bob and Patrick, I think, had to buy a lot of the equipment.

Martin Johnson: Yes, they did. They had a lot of money from a wealthy Californian heiress (see BioNews 954).

Grace MacDonald: Isn't that wonderful? What an amazing person, that she had the foresight to see that this was something so important.

Martin Johnson: And then you came down again?

Grace MacDonald: On 18 May 1978.

Martin Johnson: And what happened that time?

Grace MacDonald: Bob came, and I remember him grinning. Because I was really not well at all on the hormone the year before...

Kay Elder: Yes, the Pergonal.

Grace MacDonald: I was saying, 'Professor Edwards, are we going to have that awful hormone?'. And he laughed and he said: 'No. We're going to try it just normally this time.' I said, 'How are you going to manage that?'. And he said, 'We will take in blood'. So there was blood-taking every few hours.

Kay Elder: And then the urine samples every three hours?

Grace MacDonald: Yes. 20 May was the operation, but I went down a day early. Patrick Steptoe's secretary Diana Mann said, 'Come down on the Saturday'. So I said to her, 'Do you mind if I come down just a wee bit earlier?'. So I actually came down on the Thursday, because I knew what my cycle was like for being very short.

Kay Elder: That was so smart.

Grace MacDonald: Well, I just knew that, I knew what I was like.

Martin Johnson: Women know their own bodies better.

Kay Elder: In the natural cycle, if you'd been a day later, it would have been gone.

Grace MacDonald: It would have been gone, that's what I keep saying. Somebody up there's definitely....

Kay Elder: Somebody looking after you.

Grace MacDonald: Then I moved to Oldham and District General Hospital, because there were so many girls coming in at that stage that there was no room.

Kay Elder: Lesley Brown was pregnant by that time. She was already in Oldham.

Grace MacDonald: So we were in the same place, but in different wards.

Kay Elder: And did you know that she was pregnant?

Grace MacDonald: I had heard from somebody who was in with me, who had been in with Lesley.

Martin Johnson: Because that was the time when they were just running up to finishing, weren't they?

Grace MacDonald: It was the last, because Patrick was retiring. We had a big party for him, and we all signed a card from the Ovum Club to Patrick.

Martin Johnson: In those days, it was almost a stigma to be an IVF baby. Did you find this with Alistair?

Grace MacDonald: I didn't tell anybody, even my parents, I was told not to tell. That was part of the agreement, and I think Bob and Patrick did it with the best of motives. They didn't want to stigmatise the children. It was a real shock to me when I discovered that I was the second, because I had no idea. Going by the number of other girls coming in and out, I thought, surely there must be a lot more. But it was a reporter from a newspaper who came to my door and said to me, 'You are having the second IVF baby' – well, 'test-tube baby', he called it. And I went, 'Well, I don't know where you've got your information'. He said it was a nurse at the hospital who'd told him. I invited him in and we begged him. We said: 'Look, we don't want any publicity. You've given us news of something we didn't even know. Can you not understand what it feels like to suddenly be put in this goldfish bowl?' By that time, of course, we knew what Lesley had been going through. I couldn't live like that. He agreed to hold the story, and he didn't publish until....

Kay Elder: After Alistair was born.

Grace MacDonald: Well, no, there was an article about November or something like that. We had to leave home. We actually had to go away. We couldn't stay in our house, because of the press.

Kay Elder: So, what did you do? Where did you go?

Grace MacDonald: Well, my best friend lived in Glasgow, so we stayed there. And what made us laugh was, one of their neighbours about three doors up was the editor of the Glasgow Herald. His reporters were looking everywhere for us and we were just down the road. Eventually we were able to go back home. Alistair was due on 14 February. My waters broke on Hogmanay. I was rushed into the hospital from Lennoxtown in a snow blizzard in my next-door neighbour's Land Rover, because it was the only car we could get out the street.

Martin Johnson: So, did the reporters come to the hospital and so on?

Grace MacDonald: Yes, but the staff and everybody were wonderful. Even the other girls in the ward were really protective and nobody, not one single person talked. None of our neighbours gave away anything. When I think what Lesley and John, poor souls, went through. You know, like, people camping out. Our cul-de-sac, our next-door neighbour blocked it off with his car. They were so protective of us.

Martin Johnson: So, when we were talking informally last time, you said you didn't, explicitly say anything to Alistair?

Grace MacDonald: No, I didn't.

Martin Johnson: But he, in fact, raised it with you?

Grace MacDonald: Yes.

Martin Johnson: Can you tell us about that?

Grace MacDonald: He seemed to be settling in at school and all the rest of it, and then in 1988 when Patrick died, Alistair went: 'No!' And I thought, oh, my goodness, what's happened? And he came rushing into my room in the morning and said: 'Mum, I now know why I'm a special baby..' And I said: 'What do you mean Alistair?' And he said: 'Mum, I've just seen on the news, Uncle Patrick' – because he'd called him 'Uncle Patrick' when he'd seen him, and 'Uncle Bob' – he said, 'Uncle Patrick's just died and I've just seen Louise on the television and I now know why Gran calls me a special baby'. And I went: 'What do you mean?' And he said: 'Well, I must be the same.' So, he'd worked it out for himself.

Kay Elder: So, he saw Bob and Patrick a few times when he was growing up?

Grace MacDonald: Yes. He looked on Bob as, like another grandpa, he just loved him to bits. He thought the world of him. But that was how he found out, and then, of course, it broke in the press. But he took it all in his stride. You know, his pals at school would say things like: 'How the heck did you climb out of your test-tube? Were the walls not awful slippy? Were you sponsored by Pyrex?'

Martin Johnson: In a sense, you weren't keeping it secret, you were just not saying it.

Grace MacDonald: It was a miracle, but it was Bob and Patrick's miracle. They were the ones that performed it. I was just blessed, in that I was able to have my own child, thanks to them. So, that was the way that I always looked at it. I don't have to keep reminding Alistair.

Martin Johnson: You've talked a little about the Ovum Club. Do you want to talk a little bit about how that functioned and what you gave to each other?

Grace MacDonald: We had that bond and everybody, as they came in, whoever was there before, immediately made the next girl coming in so welcome. It became very natural. You know, we were all in the same boat and we supported each other, we commiserated with each other when it wasn't working. But there was lots of fun as well, because you always had to try and keep the morale up, and we would all sit round and tell stories and try our best to have a laugh.

Martin Johnson: Did you pick up the sense, or did you feel yourself, that even if it hadn't worked you contributed to it working?

Grace MacDonald: Yes, that was the one thing, I think, that made us feel kind of good about it. It was the one saving grace, really, that if it wasn't going to work for us, hopefully, it was going to work for someone else. All the girls were very generous about that, you know, that feeling. They didn't resent anyone else, if they thought that they were going to be successful. It was more a case of, 'Well, we've done our best, maybe it's going to help someone else'.

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PET is grateful to Elsevier for granting permission to republish this conversation.

A fuller transcript of this conversation is available here. The transcript was originally published as part of the supplementary materials that accompany the articles in the inaugural edition of the journal Reproductive BioMedicine and Society Online.