Twins born from embryos frozen 30 years ago
A 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 Centre in the United States.
The embryos had been frozen on
April 22, 1992, when George HW Bush was president.
They came from an anonymous donor couple who had used in-vitro fertilisation and then donated the embryos, which were cryopreserved at -200C.
New parents Philip and Rachel Ridgeway in Portland, Oregon, 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.
Mr 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.”