Parents Welcome ‘Oldest’ Twins In The World Born From Embryos Frozen 30 Years Ago

A couple welcomed the world’s oldest twins in the world in October. While they might only be a few weeks old, these babies were there when Vanessa Williams’s “Save the Best for Last” as frozen embryos!

Meet Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway! The twins set a new world record when it comes to frozen embryos at 30 years long.

In the same year the embryos were frozen, Bill Clinton was running for the presidency in the US in 1992. The babies were born on October 31st, barely one month old. But the parents also joked that they’re their “oldest children” among their six children.

The embryos were among some of the eggs frozen by an anonymous couple in 1992 via IVF. The egg donor was a 34-year-old woman. Married couple Philip Ridgeway and Rachel Ridgeway became the lucky couple who accepted the embryos.

CNN reported that the couple’s egg sat in the fertility lab on the West Coast of the US for 15 years. Then in 2007, they decided to donate them to the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The couple was looking forward to having more children and had requested the earliest donor. Philip said, “We weren’t looking to get the embryos that have been frozen the longest in the world. We just wanted the ones that had been waiting the longest.”

There were five embryos and two were not viable. Three were implanted, and two of the transfers were successful. Ten months after March, Lydia and Timothy were born.

They became the youngest of six, as the Ridgeways already have four other children aged 8, 6, 3 and 1. Rachel was charmed by the twins and said, “I was five years old when God gave life to Lydia and Timothy, and he’s been preserving that life ever since. In a sense, they’re our oldest children, even though they’re our smallest children.”

Dr. James Gordon who was in charge of the couple explained that the embryos were essentially frozen in time.

“If you’re frozen at nearly 200 degrees below zero, I mean, the biological processes essentially slow down to almost nothing. And so perhaps the difference between being frozen for a week, a month, a year, a decade, two decades, it doesn’t really matter.”

Fertility expert Dr. Jim Toner spoke, “It doesn’t seem like a sperm or an egg or embryo stored in liquid nitrogen ever experiences time. It’s like that Rip Van Winkle thing. It just wakes up 30 years later, and it never knew it was asleep.”

The marketing and development director Mark Mellinger of NEDC, the center where the embryo was donated, also said, “This is a new record for the transfer of the longest-frozen embryo resulting in a birth.”