Wednesday marks the 40th anniversary of the birth of English woman Louise Brown, the world's first IVF baby.
New Zealand's first IVF child, Amelia Bell, was born in 1984, and more than 19,000 New Zealanders have since been conceived via assisted means.
Oliver's mother, Jane Adams, has put her personal experience of eight rounds of IVF treatment to professional use.
A postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago's Legal Issues Centre, Dr Adams wrote her thesis on IVF in New Zealand, and is writing a book on the topic.
She also lectures in a Summer School course for the history department on the changing New Zealand family, which includes issues arising from assisted reproduction.
"As I was researching my thesis, I thought if I was going to use other people's stories in my work, I had to be talking the talk and be prepared to use myself as well, in order to help promote the idea that infertility is a condition just like any other medical conditions,'' Dr Adams said.
"There still needs to be some work done to break down stigma about it, so I had to be prepared to talk about it.''
Since Louise Brown's birth reproductive technologies have become widespread, and in 1999 her younger sister Natalie, also an IVF child, became the first such child to conceive her own baby naturally.
In New Zealand, IVF was initially strictly for married heterosexual couples.
The technique has since moved with the times. It is now available to single women and same-sex couples, and becoming publicly funded.
Dr Adams was going through a second round of IVF treatment when her second child, Daniel, now 5, was conceived naturally.
"We had three tries which weren't successful but while we were on a waiting list for another six months of publicly funded treatment, after a month we conceived Daniel, which was incredible,'' she said.
"We had been told to stop trying naturally, and we took his advice.''
As well as writing and lecturing on assisted reproduction, Dr Adams also co-runs Fertility NZ's Dunedin support group for intending and current IVF parents.
"The cliche is that it's a roller-coaster of emotions, but it really is,'' she said.
"The psychological aspects of infertility are just as difficult as the physical aspects, so there is great value in having a support group and other people around in a similar situation.''
