What is shared pregnancy: new technology makes it possible for two women in Spain to become mothers of a baby

Derek, a baby whose birth the world learned this week, is making global news. Its arrival represents a medical milestone for Europe, as it was carried by two women. This baby has two mothers, Azahara and Estefanía, the protagonists in this story of shared pregnancy, a technique that will certainly gain momentum with the arrival of Derek.

The birth took place in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, where more details became known about the system that made the child’s arrival possible. It’s called INVOcell, El Mundo reported.

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What is shared pregnancy

INVOcell has its key and El Español explained it: it implies a ‘mini incubator‘ which can be implanted from one woman’s uterus into another.

This new system, with the help of Juaneda Fertility Center, is exclusive in the Balearic Islands, the media noted.

But how does this mini incubator work?

El Mundo pointed out that “this technique consists of placing a device under the cervix of one of the two women that works as a kind of incubator. There the embryo develops for the first few days and once it is developed, the doctors take it out to implant it in the uterus of its partner.”

“We extracted the eggs of patient number one and combined them with sperm that we obtained from sperm banks in Seville and the Basque Country,” Felipe Gallego, biologist and director of the Juaneda Fertility Center laboratory, explained to Diario de Mallorca, published in The Spanish.

Then “the fertilized eggs are placed into the INVOcell, which is in turn inserted under the cervix of one of the patients, where it remains for four days until they become an embryo.”

On the fifth day, the change takes place: “the couple goes to the clinic to take out the INVOcell and insert it with the already formed embryo into the second woman, who will complete the pregnancy until delivery.”

This is “an intravaginal culture device into which the eggs and sperm are introduced, and then inserted into the woman’s vagina. It consists of two parts: a capsule that is placed under the cervix and a fixation device that prevents the device from moving or leaving the vagina,” Criar con Sentido reported.

If you want to share the pregnancy, they emphasized, “the couple must go to the center on the fifth day to take out the INVOcell – written the same as Invocell – and transfer the already formed embryo to the second woman, who will be the one is who will carry it within her until birth. “childbirth”.

After two weeks, ‘a blood test is carried out to confirm that the woman has become pregnant’.

Benefits of the INVOcell system

In this regard, the laboratory of the Juaneda Fertility Center points out that it is good “for couples of two women where both want to be physically and emotionally involved in the treatment, both taking turns hosting the embryo in their uterus.”

They indicate this in cases of “heterosexual couples who want to enjoy a process with less laboratory intervention.”

The specialist Felipe Gallego, quoted in Criar con Sentido, indicated that INVOcell is “up to 40% cheaper than conventional in vitro fertilization.” This is due to “the fewer hours of work that this technique entails for the professionals who participate in it.”

They also explain that with the 8 eggs and 30,000 sperm cells inserted into the Invocell capsule, a maximum of 8 embryos can be obtained, although it is most common for between 4 and 5 to be generated.

Baby Derek was born on Monday, October 30, 2023 in the maternity ward of the Juaneda Miramar Hospital in Mallorca. According to El Español, he weighed 3.3 kilos. Local media published photos of the two mothers, aged 27 and 30, with their son and the team of doctors. (JO)