A US woman has broken a world record by giving birth to twins from embryos frozen 30 years ago. The father of the babies, Philip, said, “In a way, even though they are our youngest children, they are our eldest.”
A woman in Oregon, USA, has set a new record by giving birth to twins from embryos frozen 30 years ago.
EMBRYOS WERE FROZEN ON APRIL 22, 1992
The twins, Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway, were born on October 31. But the unnamed donor gave the embryos on April 22, 1992, and they were frozen at 200 degrees below zero.
So the babies had been waiting 30 years for a family to choose them.
“WE DIDN’T KNOW WE WOULD BREAK THE RECORD”
The baby’s parents, Philip and Rachel, already had four children but decided to have more using donated embryos.
When they went to the US National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) to choose one of the long-stored embryos, the couple told CNN, “We just wanted to get one of the long-stored ones. We didn’t know we were going to break the record for the longest frozen embryos in the world.”
“EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE OUR YOUNGEST CHILDREN, THEY ARE ACTUALLY OUR ELDEST”
“In a way, even though they are our youngest children, they are our eldest,” the babies’ father Philip told CNN, noting that the situation was mind-boggling.
“THE IDEA OF GIVING BIRTH TO YOUR ADOPTED CHILD IS WONDERFUL”
Using frozen embryos is also known as ’embryo adoption’ in the US.
“When we started this process, we wanted to choose embryos that had been waiting for a very long time. We were looking for embryos that needed a home because they had been overlooked,” mother Rachel told The Post.
The couple, who decided to have a child with frozen embryos in 2020, chose 5 embryos that had been frozen nearly 30 years ago, 3 of which survived the process. The 3 embryos transplanted into the mother’s uterus resulted in twin pregnancies.
THE PREVIOUS RECORD WAS SET IN 2020
After a successful birth, the twins were born 30 years late. Timothy weighed about 3 kilograms at birth and Lydia weighed about 2.5 kilograms.
The oldest record for frozen embryos resulting in a live birth was set in 2020 with Molly Gibson, born from an embryo frozen for 25 years.
