Baby Born From 30-Year-Old Embryo Sets Record

An embryo stored for over 30 years and donated to a couple seeking assisted reproduction was developed into what experts called the world’s “oldest baby,” born July 26, the MIT Technology Review exclusively reported.

Baby Thaddeus Daniel Pierce was born to Lindsey and Tim Pierce of London, Ohio — after Linda Archerd, 62, donated the embryos to them via a Christian adoption agency, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-owned magazine.

Archerd and her then-husband had created four embryos through in vitro fertilization in May 1944 after unsuccessfully trying for six years to conceive, the outlet reported. Archerd carried one of the embryos in her womb and gave birth to a baby girl, while the other three embryos remained cryopreserved in what was an increasingly expensive and fraught process. The girl reportedly is now Thaddeus’s elder sister by 30 years, and has a daughter aged 10. (RELATED: US Fertility Rate Plummeted To All-Time Low In 2024, New Data Shows)

Archerd, who hoped for more babies while her husband differed, won custody of the three embryos after divorcing her husband and kept funding the storage of the embryos but struggled with what to do with them as menopause dawned — until she learnt about faith-based agencies that oversaw planned embryo donations, the outlet reported.

Even so, finding an agency that would accept long-frozen embryos and finding matching parents for the embryos proved difficult for Acherd, according to the outlet. Acherd reportedly preferred to donate to a married Christian U.S.-based couple.

With the help of Archerd’s fertility doctor, the embryos entered the matching pool of the Snowflakes program run by the Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency in 2022, the outlet reported.

The agency reportedly reassigned the “hard to place” embryos to its Open Hearts program as the likelihood of finding parents whose fertility clinics would have accepted the embryos appeared slim because of concerns over viability.

The Pierces, who had signed up for the Open Hearts program and determined they would receive any embryos, reportedly emerged as the matching parents. They had been working with a Tennessee-based fertility clinic that was open to any embryos and had been optimizing its practice to create as few excess embryos as possible, as a matter of conscience.

“We had a rough birth but we are both doing well now,” Lindsey Pierce told the outlet. “He is so chill. We are in awe that we have this precious baby!”

Archerd told the outlet she was eager to meet Thaddeus. “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,” Archerd said. “I pulled out my baby book and compared them side by side, and there is no doubt that they are siblings.”

“We didn’t go into it thinking we would break any records,” Lindsey told the outlet. “We just wanted to have a baby.”