Woman gives birth to baby that grew from embryo frozen 24 years ago
An American woman has achieved a remarkable feat by giving birth to a healthy baby girl, Emma Wren Gibson, whose embryo had been frozen a quarter century ago.
Hospital officials are considering this incredible event to be a potential world record, as stated by the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Emma Wren Gibson was born on November 25, as announced by NEDC this week. The embryo that eventually became Emma Wren was originally conceived by another couple and was frozen on October 14, 1992.
Tina Gibson, the woman who recently gave birth to Emma Wren, was born in 1991, according to Mark Mellinger, NEDC’s marketing director.
“If the baby was born when it was supposed to born, we could have been best friends,” Tina Gibson told NBC News.
Remarkably, this makes the embryo that developed into Emma Wren only about a year younger than her mother. It wasn’t until Tina Gibson was pregnant that she learned from her doctors that the embryo had been frozen over 24 years prior.
Tina Gibson and her husband made the selection of the embryo based on its genetic characteristics, although they were unaware of how long it had been frozen.
Out of the three embryos implanted, only one survived, and two more cryopreserved embryos from the same biological parents remain.
The NEDC stated that this case represents the “longest-frozen embryo to successfully come to birth,” citing the University of Tennessee Preston Medical Library’s research staff as a source.
However, some experts expressed caution about labeling it as an official record, as US companies are not mandated to disclose the age of embryos, only the pregnancy outcomes.
Previously, the record was held by a baby boy who had been frozen for 20 years and was born to a woman in New York in 2011.
For Tina Gibson and her husband, who were unable to conceive on their own, the birth of Emma is a cherished miracle. Benjamin Gibson expressed their joy, saying, “Emma is such a sweet miracle.”
