30 Years After Being Frozen As Embryos, Newborn Twins Set World Record

Rachel and Philip Ridgeway Adopting embryos that had been frozen for nearly 30 years to make the most of their broken situation was a way to make the most of it. Their love led to a world record being broken when the twins who had been frozen for almost 30 years were born Oct. 31, 2022.

The twins Timothy and Lydia, “set the new known record for the longest-frozen embryos to ever result in a successful live birth, according to research staff at the University of Tennessee Preston Medical Library,” Comment The National Embryo Donation Center, (NEDC), in a celebratory announcement of birth.

Lydia and Timothy were stored in freezers for nearly 30 years — 29 years and 10 months, to be exact — before being implanted inside their adoptive mother, Rachel Ridgeway. According to NEDC the oldest record of babies who survived after being frozen was 27 years.

Ridgeways also have biological children and decided to adopt embryos after feeling overwhelmed by the large number of abandoned children in freezers. This number is staggering There are more than 1,000,000 Americans alone.

As Rachel shared with Rachel, they chose NEDC for the following reasons: “They see each embryo as a child and treat them as such. NEDC works with Southeastern Fertility Center, which is a non-discard facility. They don’t throw away any embryos. They have multiple options for infertility treatment and IVF options that don’t include freezing of embryos.”

The couple sought out the children who had been waiting the longest — the ones most likely to be forsaken and who had no chance of being raised by their biological parents. Rachel said that she searched the NEDC website to find children who were least likely to be selected. This included frozen children whose biological families had died. “have anything in the medical portion of their profile that the clinic needs to inform adoptive parents of. Examples include history of testing positive for an STD, history of genetic disorder, etc…”

“No one looks at these profiles because the embryos aren’t ‘perfect,’” Rachel said it to me. “After looking through the profiles and finding embryos under this category, we decided that the best way to choose was to look at who had been waiting the longest at NEDC and pick them. That’s what we did. We found the embryos that had waited the longest and picked that profile as our primary donor.”

The Ridgeways then insisted on implanting all three viable embryos despite their physician’s concerns. The Ridgeways were able to save Timothy and Lydia.

Ridgeways knew that these children were created by commodification and had lost the two human beings they needed to sustain them. Maximum development success and identity — their mother and father. They went into the adoption determined to do everything they can to help mend the children’s wounds. Their choices reflect what it means for children to do hard work on their behalf, instead of insisting that children do hard jobs to fulfill selfish desires.

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