Timothy and Lydia Ridgeway are twins who were born after embryos were frozen for 30 years. This is a record for developing from the longest frozen embryos known to be in a live birth. The embryos are said to be frozen in April 1992, and the twins were born in October.
Rachel Ridgeway, a mother of six, was so excited that she is just three years older(albeit technically) than her newborns. The twins were delivered three weeks ago and are said to have developed from the oldest known embryos. Rachel and her husband, Philip, conceived three decades after their son and daughter's names were frozen as embryos.
The twins’ biological parents, who wanted to be anonymous, donated their embryos to the National Embryo Donation Centre, also known as NEDC after they went through IVF. The Christian nonprofit, which offers embryos and IVF to couples who’ve been married for at least three years, left them in liquid nitrogen along with other thousands of embryos.
The NEDC was founded in 2002 so that it can help people to start or enlarge their families. Philip, a faithful Christian, mentions that “I was 5 years old when God gave life to these embryos,” he saw that their birth was a miracle because Rachel was just three at the time of their conception.
“It is breathtaking to think about it”, says the dad. Everyone has trouble understanding how this happened. The Ridgeways, who had kids aged 2 to 8, initially went to the NEDC in December 2019. Rachel says that they needed assistance getting pregnant to have the other three children, which is why they took a hormone-boosting medication called Clomid.
The couple use the money that was supposed to be for their fertility treatment to adopt embryos. They had hoped that they would be welcoming their fourth child in 2020. They went to adopt a frozen embryo from NEDC in Knoxville, Tennessee. Rachel says that they decided to use the money for fertility care to have an embryo adoption. They wanted to use a different method to have a family.
Things changed when they had their fourth child, naturally conceived, who is now two years old. Although this was what they wanted, they were still looking to enlarge the family. They then went back to the original plan, which is the adoption process. Philip mentions that being a Christian motivated them and said, “let’s have as many kids that God wants to give us, we are not done yet if that’s God’s will.”
The couple who live in Vancouver, Washington, chose their embryos in December 2021 from the “special consideration” section of the NEDC.
Edited by Sara Irfan
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