Lydia and Timothy are the “oldest” babies in the world. The father: «I was five years old when God gave them life. It’s like they’re our oldest children.”
They are called Lydia and Timothyhave a few days to live because they are born on October 31st. Technically though they are the oldest newborns in the world because the twins from Oregon are born from frozen embryos 30 years ago, on April 22, 1992 when, as his parents recall, Bill Clinton was running for the White House. “There is something very astounding about all of this,” dad Philip Ridgeway told the
Cnn because in a sense they are our eldest children. Philip and his wife Rachel have four other children aged 8, 6, 3 and 2, none of them conceived by IVF or donors. «I was five when God gave life to Lydia and Timothy and has preserved that life ever since.”
Previous records
The two newborns broke the record for being born alive from frozen embryos for the longest period on record, according to the National Embryo Donation Center. The previous record belonged to Molly Gibson born in 2020 from frozen embryos 27 years earlier and before her there was her sister Emma, born from a frozen embryo 24 years earlier.
Conservation
Embryos were created for one anonymous married couple using in vitro fertilization. The man was just over 50 years old while the egg donor was 24. The five unused embryos were frozen on April 22, 1992 and stored in a fertility laboratory on the West Coast of the United States. for nearly three decades in liquid nitrogen at a temperature of nearly 200 degrees below zero. In 2007, the couple who fathered them donated them to the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville, Tennessee in the hope that someone could use them.
“Special” embryos
“We never had in mind a precise number of children we wanted to have, but we always thought we wanted as many as God wanted to give us. And when we heard of theembryo adoption we thought it was something we would like to do,” recalled the father. During the search for donors, the Ridgeways specifically asked the donation center for a category called “special consideration” referring to the fact that they are embryos which, for whatever reason, do not easily find recipients.
The transfer
The embryos were thawed on February 28th . Of the five that were thawed, two were non-viable. According to experts
the survival rate during thawing of embryos stands at 80%. Rachel recalled that the doctors recommended transferring only two of the three embryos because twins are at risk but she chose to accept all three. “They showed me the photo of the three embryos, of my children, I wanted to have them all.” And so it was: the three embryos were implanted in Rachel’s uterus on March 2, 29 years and 10 months after being frozen. However, one of the two embryos did not make it.
The age of the embryo
According to studies, between 25% and 40% of embryo transfers result in the delivery of a live newborn. «If an embryo is frozen at almost 200 degrees below zero, the biological processes slow down to almost zero. And so maybe the difference between being frozen for a week, a month, a year, a decade, two decades, it doesn’t really matter,” he commented. John Gordonthe Ridgeways doctor. The age of the embryo should not affect the health of the baby. What matters most is the age of the woman who donated the egg that went into the embryo.
November 22, 2022 (change November 22, 2022 | 1:40 pm)
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