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Mom Gives Birth To 24-Year-Old Baby

Photo from Pixabay

A baby conceived in 1992 was born 24 years later to a couple in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Emma Gibson, born on November 25, was frozen as an embryo and donated to a clinic that specializes in embryo donation and adoption, NBC News reports.

Tina Gibson, the child’s mother, said,

Do you realize that I’m 25 years old? If the baby was born when it was supposed to born, we could have been best friends.

Benjamin Gibson, the father, said, “I think she looks pretty perfect to have been frozen all those years ago.”

It’s not possible to know if this birth has made a record, but it’s most possibly close, according to the clinic’s president and medical director, Dr. Jeffrey Keenan. Keenan, who performed the embryo transfer, said, “We had our medical library, which is very good at finding things, look to see if they could find anything older than that and they could not.” He added, “But it is kind of neat that this embryo was conceived just a year or so before the mother was.”

Fertility clinic records are private, meaning there are no official databases showing the ages of embryos’ ages when they were transferred to a woman’s uterus. Outside experts do agree that Emma might have set a record, even if it would be difficult to verify any claims.

Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said, “These are not the kind of claims that are generally made in peer-reviewed scientific publications. They are typically the kind of claims that are made by marketer.”

Emma would have been conceived just a year and a half before Tina was born. Her mother said, “I think it makes it all that much more of a miracle.”

But it doesn’t matter how old the embryo was, medical professionals agree. Tipton said, “I think it makes it all that much more of a miracle.”

Dr. David Adamson, CEO of Arc Fertility in San Jose, California, said, “The babies are the same. Overall, IVF babies do very well. Over all, the frozen embryos do just as well as the fresh embryos.”

Keenan’s clinic, the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC), saves frozen embryos from being destroyed. People who have embryos frozen for fertility often have more than they need for pregnancies, and are left to decide whether they will store them, dispose of them, or donate them. Keenan hopes the publicity surrounding the Gibsons would encourage people to donate embryos to others.

 

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