Featured Image Credit: Lindsey Pierce/Rejoice Fertility Clinic
Topics: Science, Parenting, Technology
Emily Brown
Topics: Science, Parenting, Technology
The world's oldest baby, named Thaddeus Daniel Pierce, has been born to a couple living in London, Ohio.
Before you ask, no, this isn't a Benjamin Button situation.
Thaddeus is a newborn, but his world record doesn't stem from how old he was when he was delivered. Instead, it comes from the fact he was developed from an embryo created at a time when his new dad, Tim Pierce, was still a toddler.
Tim and his wife, Lindsey, 'adopted' the embryo from Linda Archerd, who admitted the whole situation has been 'pretty surreal'.
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“It’s hard to even believe," she said, while speaking about the situation for the MIT Technology Review.
Lindsey, meanwhile, said her family and members of her church have described it as 'like something from a sci-fi movie'.
Embryo donation is a common practise, but what makes Thaddeus so special is the fact that the embryo he came from was created in 1994, before going into storage for 30 and a half years.
As a result, Lindsey noted: “The baby has a 30-year-old sister."
Linda created the embryos with her then-husband when they were trying to get pregnant in the early 1990s. They managed to make four of them, one of which was transferred to Linda's uterus and allowed her to give birth to a baby girl.
The remaining three embryos were cryopreserved, with Linda originally planning to use them herself. However, after she divorced her husband and started going through menopause, she looked into embryo 'adoption', which would allow her to meet the potential recipients of her embryos.
“I didn’t want them to go out of the country,” she explained. “And being Christian is very important to me, because I am.”
Lindsey and Tim had signed up for the same program as Linda after trying for a baby for seven years, and after they were matched, Lindsey had two of the embryos transferred into her uterus, as the third was no longer viable.
One of those embryos developed into a fetus, and now Thaddeus is officially out into the world.
Linda is keen to meet the little boy, noting he looks like her own daughter did when she was a baby. She said seeing him in person would be a 'dream come true', adding: "I wish that they didn’t live so far away from me ... He is perfect!”
For her part, Lindsey admitted: “We didn’t go into it thinking we would break any records. We just wanted to have a baby.”