The twins Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway were born on October 31 from the longest-frozen embryos to ever result in a live birth, according to the National Embryo Donation Center in the United States.
These are the first offspring of fetuses that are 30 years old. The previous record-holder was Molly Gibson, who was born in 2020 from an embryo that had been stored in cryopreservation for over 27 years.
The father of the twins, Phillip Ridgeway, told CNN that Lydia and Timothy were conceived when he was five years old, and that God has been saving their lives ever since. Even though they are our youngest children, he said, in a way they are our oldest.
The joyful couple already has four other children, ranging in age from two to eight, so the twins are not their first.
IVF was used to create the embryos for an unnamed married couple. They used an egg donor who was 34 years old, and the husband was around 50. The eggs were kept in a container that resembles a propane tank in liquid nitrogen at a temperature of almost 200 degrees below zero.
The couple who generated the embryos maintained them in a fertility lab until 2007, when they decided to donate them to the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the hopes that another couple might be able to use them. They were picked by the Ridgeways thirty years later.
The embryos were defrosted on February 28 at the national embryo donation center, and the IVF transfer was performed on March 2, 2002.
On October 31st, Lydia, who was around 2,300 kg, and Timothy, who was about 2,700 kg, were born. The big family is having a great time with their twins and is sailing through a sea of happiness.
