Baby breaks record after being born from embryo frozen 27 years ago

A baby girl has set a new record with her birth after she was born from an embryo that was frozen 27 years ago.

On 26 October, Tina and Benjamin Gibson, from Tennessee, welcomed their daughter Molly Everette Gibson in a history-making birth nearly three decades after her embryo was frozen on 14 October 1992.

The arrival of the couple’s second child, who marks a new record for the longest-frozen embryo to ever come to birth according to research staff at the University of Tennessee Preston Medical Library, began with an embryo transfer to Tina’s uterus on 12 February.

The procedure was conducted by the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC), which helps families have children through in-vitro fertilisation.

However, the medical achievement is not a first for the couple, as their eldest daughter Emma Wren Gibson previously held the record after she was born in 2017 from an embryo frozen for 24 years.

The sisters, who were chosen from a range of donor profiles, were frozen together as embryos on the same day in 1992 and are fully genetic siblings.

Of the newest record, Carol Sommerfelt, NEDC’s lab director and embryologist, said the birth reflects positively on the technology used at the time of the embryo freezing.

“When Tina and Ben returned for their sibling transfer, I was thrilled that the remaining two embryos from the donor that resulted in Emma Wren’s birth survived the thaw and developed into two very good quality embryos for their transfer,” she said. “This definitely reflects on the technology used all those years ago and its ability to preserve the embryos for future use under an indefinite time frame.”

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