The world’s “oldest baby” has been born in the United States from an embryo frozen in 1994.
Thaddeus Daniel Pierce was born on Saturday, having been developed from an embryo that had been in storage for 30 and a half years.
His parents have described how their stunned family and church have compared the birth to “something from a sci-fi movie,” explaining they were in amazed by their child, the MIT Technology Review reported.
Thaddeus’ mother Lindsey Pierce told the science magazine: “We had a rough birth but we are both doing well now.
"He is so chill. We are in awe that we have this precious baby."
Linda Acherd, 62, who donated the embryo also described the situation as surreal, explaining that “it’s hard to even believe”.
Ms Archerd had tried to get pregnant for six years during the 1990s and she had turned to IVF with her husband.
They managed to create four embryos in 1994 and of them later became a healthy baby girl. But the three remaining embryos were preserved and kept in a storage tank.
Ms Archerd’s daughter grew up and the 30-year-old now has her own 10-year-old daughter. Meanwhile, the other embryos remained frozen.
Ms Archerd had described the three embryos as “my three little hopes” and thought she might one day have another baby.
She won custody over the embryos when she divorced her husband and kept the trio despite the cost of storing them rising to around a thousand dollars a year.
After going through menopause, the mother ended up signing up to the Snowflakes program run by the Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency.
Ms Archerd’s embryos were then assigned to the agency’s Open Hearts program for embryos that are “hard to place,” along with others that have been in storage for a long time or are thought to be less likely to result in a healthy birth.
Lindsey and Tim Pierce, who had been trying to have a baby for seven years, and had “checkmarked anything and everything” in the hope of finding a match.
“We thought it was wild,” Mrs Pierce continued. “We didn’t know they froze embryos that long ago.”
The Pierces had to travel five hours from their home in Ohio to the clinic in Tennessee five times over two weeks.
One of the three embryos had stopped growing but the other two were transferred to Mrs Pierce’s uterus on November 14, and one developed into a fetus.
Following the birth Ms Archerd also told the MIT Technology Review: “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.
“I pulled out my baby book and compared them side by side, and there is no doubt that they are siblings.”
She added that the baby was a “dream come true”.
