With the advancement in the medical world, a childless couple can now be blessed with a bundle of joy. Let’s take a look at this quarter-century old newborn baby and her birth.
An American woman has given birth to a healthy baby girl from an embryo that was frozen a quarter century ago, in what hospital officials say may be a world record.
The baby, named Emma Wren Gibson, was born November 25, according to the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) in Knoxville, Tennessee, which revealed the birth announcement this week.
The embryo was conceived by another couple and frozen on October 14, 1992.
YOUNGER THAN THE MOTHER
Tina Gibson, the woman who just gave birth to Emma Wren, was born in 1991, NEDC marketing director Mark Mellinger told AFP on Wednesday.
By some measures, that would make the embryo that became Emma Wren only about a year younger than her mother. “If the baby was born when it was supposed to born, we could have been best friends,” Tina Gibson, now 26 told NBC News.
Gibson said she wasn’t told by doctors until she was pregnant that the embryo had been frozen more than 24 years earlier. “I just stared at them, I was like, what? Are you kidding?”
Menninger said Gibson and her husband selected the embryo based on a profile of genetic characteristics but was not told how long the embryo had been frozen.
Gibson was implanted with three embryos but only one survived, he added. There remain two more cryopreserved embryos from the same biological parents.
The case marks the “longest-frozen embryo to successfully come to birth,” said the NEDC, citing the research staff at the University of Tennessee Preston Medical Library as a source.
NOT REQUIRED TO REPORT THE AGE
However, some experts expressed caution about proclaiming such a record.
US companies are not required to report the age of the embryos, just the outcome of the pregnancies, Zaher Merhi, director of IVF research and development at New Hope Fertility Center in New York, told CNN. “Nobody has these records,” he said.
The previous record-holder was believed to be a baby boy frozen for 20 years, born to a New York woman in 2011.
The embryo was stored by the NEDC, a Christian organization that describes itself as “the world’s leading comprehensive embryo adoption program,” with 686 babies born to date.
Its mission is to “protect the lives and dignity of frozen embryos that would not be used by their genetic parents and to help other couples build the families they have longed for via donated embryos.”
Gibson and her husband were unable to conceive a child on their own, and are thrilled with their new baby. “Emma is such a sweet miracle,” said Benjamin Gibson in a statement.
“I think she looks pretty perfect to have been frozen all those years ago.”
Frozen embryos are sometimes known as “snow babies”. After a couple goes through IVF treatment there are sometimes leftover embryos, which are frozen for potential later use.
The National Embryo Donation Center encourages people to donate those embryos to other couples who are unable to conceive. The organization’s website says it believes that life begins at conception and states: “Christian faith is the overriding principle upon which we operate.” It only donates embryos to a man and a woman, who must have been married for at least three years.
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