Babies born from embryos kept frozen for 30 years

An Oregon woman has given birth to twins from embryos frozen 30 years ago, breaking a previous record.

The babies, Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway, were born on Oct. 31 from the longest-frozen embryos ever to result in a live birth, according to the National Embryo Donation Center in the United States.

The embryos had been frozen on April 22, 1992 when George H.W. Bush was president.

They came from an anonymous donor couple who had used in vitro fertilization and then donated the embryos, which were cryopreserved at 200 degrees below zero.

Philip and Rachel Ridgeway in Portland, Ore., already had four children but decided to have more by using donated embryos.

They looked through a database that gave the key characteristics of the embryo donors and showed which were the earliest donations.

Philip Ridgeway told CNN: “We weren’t looking to get the embryos that have been frozen the longest in the world. We just wanted the ones that had been waiting the longest.

“There is something mind-boggling about it. In a sense, they’re our oldest children, even though they’re our smallest children.”

Timothy was born at 6 pounds 7 ounces, and Lydia was 5 pounds 11 ounces.

Rachel Ridgeway said: “They were good-size babies. It really is God’s grace because he has just sustained us each step of the way.”

Their previous children were not born using frozen embryos.

Freezing embryos began in the 1980s and they can be kept indefinitely if correctly stored.

Dr. Jim Toner, a fertility specialist in Atlanta, told CNN: “It doesn’t seem like a sperm or an egg or embryo stored in liquid nitrogen ever experiences time.

“It’s like that Rip Van Winkle thing. It just wakes up 30 years later, and it never knew it was asleep.”

The previous record for a frozen embryo resulting in a live birth was in 2020 when Molly Gibson was born in Tennessee from an embryo frozen 26 years earlier.

Her sister Emma held the record before that, having been born from an embryo frozen for 24 years.

It is possible that even older frozen embryos have been used but no evidence of it has been reported.