An Oregon mother recently gave birth to twins frozen as embryos in April 1992, making them the longest-frozen embryos to ever result in a live birth, according to the National Embryo Donation Center via CNN.
Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway were born to Rachel and Philip Ridgeway on October 31, having been born from an embryo frozen in April 1992.
The twins surpassed the previous longest-frozen embryo record of 27 years set by Molly Gibson, born in 2020, who surpassed her sister Emma, born from an embryo frozen 24 years prior.
“There is something mind-boggling about it,” Philip Ridgeway said while he and his wife held their newborn children at their Oregon home. “I was 5 years old when God gave life to Lydia and Timothy, and he’s been preserving that life ever since.”
“In a sense, they’re our oldest children, even though they’re our smallest children,” Ridgeway added. The Ridgeways have four other children, ages 8, 6, 3 and almost 2, none conceived via IVF or donors.
The embryos were created by an anonymous married couple through the process of in-vitro fertilization using a 34-year-old egg donor.
The frozen embryo sat in storage for nearly three decades at a fertility lab on the West Coast until 2007 when the couple who created them donated the embryos to the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville, Tennessee for another couple to use them.
“We’ve never had in our minds a set number of children we’d like to have,” Philip said. “We’ve always thought we’ll have as many as God wants to give us, and … when we heard about embryo adoption, we thought that’s something we would like to do.”