30-year-old baby: How an embryo frozen before the internet era brought joy to a couple struggling to have a child
Lindsey and Tim Pierce
welcomed their son,
Thaddeus Daniel Pierce
, in Ohio. But what sets this birth apart is not the baby's health or weight. It's his age — or rather, the age of the embryo he came from. That embryo was created in 1994 and remained frozen for over 30 years before being implanted.
According to BBC News and MIT Technology Review, this birth may now set a world record for the oldest known frozen embryo to result in a live birth. The previous record belonged to twins born in Oregon in 2022 from embryos frozen in 1992.
The story begins in 1994
Thaddeus's journey started long before Lindsey and Tim had even met. In the early 1990s, Linda Archerd and her then-husband turned to in vitro fertilisation (IVF) after struggling to conceive. Their IVF cycle created four embryos. One led to the birth of a daughter, now 30, who has a ten-year-old child of her own.
The remaining three embryos were cryopreserved and stored in a tank of liquid nitrogen. After her divorce, Archerd was granted custody of the embryos and continued to pay for their storage for decades.
'I just couldn't bring myself to destroy them,' she told BBC News. 'They're connected to my daughter.'
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Choosing a new family for the embryo
In 2023, Archerd made the decision to place the unused embryos for adoption. She worked with Nightlight Christian Adoptions, a faith-based agency in the US that runs the "Snowflakes"
embryo adoption
programme.
This programme allows donors to select adoptive families based on personal criteria. In Archerd's case, she requested the embryos go to a 'married, Caucasian, Christian couple from the United States.'
Lindsey and Tim Pierce, who live in London, Ohio, had been trying to have a baby for seven years and signed up for the same programme.
'We didn't go into it thinking we would break any records,' Lindsey told MIT Technology Review. 'We just wanted to have a baby.'
A clinic that accepts embryos of any age
The embryo transfer was carried out at Rejoice Fertility in Tennessee. The clinic is run by Dr John Gordon, a reproductive endocrinologist and Reformed Presbyterian. He is known for accepting older embryos that some clinics might turn away.
'We have certain guiding principles, and they're coming from our faith,' said Gordon. 'Every embryo deserves a chance at life and that the only embryo that cannot result in a healthy baby is the embryo not given the opportunity to be transferred into a patient.'
The embryo, thawed and transferred without complications, resulted in a healthy pregnancy and birth. The Pierces named their son Thaddeus.
Family reactions and a striking resemblance
For the Pierces, the experience has been equal parts surreal and joyful.
Speaking again to MIT Technology Review, Lindsey said, 'We had a rough birth, but we're both doing well now. He is so chill. We are in awe that we have this precious baby.'
She also remarked on the age gap between her son and his biological half-sister: 'The baby has a 30-year-old sister.'
Archerd has not yet met Thaddeus in person, but said the resemblance is undeniable. 'The first thing that I noticed when Lindsey sent me his pictures is how much he looks like my daughter when she was a baby,' she said. 'I pulled out my baby book and compared them side by side, and there is no doubt that they are siblings.'
Embryo adoption: A different path to parenthood
Embryo adoption, while not as widely known as other fertility options, allows the recipient mother to carry the baby herself. It is often used by couples who cannot conceive with their own eggs or sperm.
In this case, the Pierces were open to adopting older embryos and were not discouraged by the embryo's age. Once they learned that long-term freezing does not impact embryo quality if preservation is done correctly, they went ahead.
The choice was both spiritual and practical. They saw it as a rare and meaningful opportunity.
The science holds up
Experts have long debated the shelf-life of frozen embryos. Thaddeus's birth now stands as a clear example that even embryos frozen with 1990s techniques can still result in healthy babies if properly stored.
Millions of embryos are currently frozen worldwide, many unused, sitting in storage. This case raises deeper ethical and medical questions. Should these embryos be preserved forever? Should more families be encouraged to consider embryo adoption?
The UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) reports that IVF now accounts for 3.1% of all births in the UK, compared to 1.3% in 2000. Among women aged 40 to 44, one in ten births are now via IVF.
In the US, IVF births account for around 2% of the total. As more people freeze embryos for future use, cases like Thaddeus's may become more common.
The first successful IVF birth happened in the UK in 1978. Since then, reproductive medicine has progressed in leaps. Still, the emotional and ethical terrain remains complex. Thaddeus's story is part of that evolving picture.
His birth is not just a record-setter. It's a reminder that science, faith and personal conviction can sometimes come together in ways no one could predict thirty years ago.
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