A baby in Tennessee was born thanks to the wonders of science. The baby girl is technically 27 years old, and there is only an 18-month age gap between her and her mother.
27-year-old infant
The baby girl, Molly Everette Gibson, was born from an embryo that was frozen back in October 1992. The embryo was frozen just 18 months after her mother, Tina Gibson, was born in April 1991.
The 29-year-old mother told New York Post in an exclusive interview from her home in Knoxville, Tennessee, that she finds it difficult to wrap her head around the whole situation, but calls Molly their little miracle.
According to the researchers at the University of Tennessee Preston Medical Library, the infant is now in history books as the longest-frozen embryo that resulted in a live birth.
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Baby Molly's arrival broke the previous record that was held by Emma Wren, who spent 24 years on ice before she was delivered in November 2017.
The embryos were frozen together, making them full genetic siblings. The embryos were thawed three years apart at the National Embryo Donation Center or NEDC before transferring into Tina's uterus. The biological parents are unknown as they were donated anonymously.
NEDC lab director Dr. Carol Sommerfelt stated that witnessing an embryo frozen years ago, resulting in a baby's birth, is very rewarding.
Tina and her husband Benjamin Gibson, now 36-years-old, turned to the NEDC after trying to conceive a child naturally on their own for over five years without any luck. Benjamin was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, which causes infertility.
The couple had fostered children and were considering adopting, but in 2017, Tina's parents told them about the organization after watching an item about it on TV.
The pair eventually visited the center, and they were given the profiles of more than 300 strangers who had donated embryos following IVF treatment.
Tina and Benjamin told New York Post that they narrowed their choices to couples who were short because both of them are short too. They also checked on the health backgrounds of the donors. That was when Emma was conceived.
After a couple of years, the couple wanted to have another baby, and they wanted the paired embryo to give Emma a sibling. That was when Molly was born.
Old embryos
The practice director of Manhattan fertility clinic CCRM, Dr. Brian Levine, said that frozen embryos do not have a known shelf life and can go on for years without being affected.
It is still important to consider that those embryos that were put on ice in the 1980s and 1990s can degrade over time because the slow freeze technique used by specialists back them was prone to vulnerabilities.
Dr. Levine added no concrete evidence that slow freezing could lead to any disabilities or defects on the child. He added that embryos of the new millennia will likely last and perform better than embryos frozen in the 1990s.
This is because of the vitrification used today, also known as flash freezing, and the ability to test embryos on a viability scale.
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