A baby has been born from an embryo that was frozen more than 30 years ago - making him the world’s “oldest baby".
Thaddeus Daniel Pierce was born on July 26, 2025, in Ohio to Lindsey and Tim Pierce.
The couple adopted the embryo from Linda Archerd, now 62, through a Christian embryo adoption agency, marking the first reported birth from an embryo stored since 1994, Sky News reported.
“We didn’t go into it thinking we would break any records,” Lindsey told MIT Technology Review. “We just wanted to have a baby.”
Thaddeus was conceived in the early 1990s when Archerd and her then-husband underwent IVF after struggling with infertility.
The treatment produced four embryos - one of which was transferred to Archerd, resulting in the birth of her daughter, now 30, and a mother herself. The remaining three embryos were cryopreserved for future use.
After divorcing and later entering menopause, Archerd reconsidered the fate of the embryos.
She was uncomfortable with the idea of donating them to science or placing them anonymously, so she chose “embryo adoption," which is a more involved form of embryo donation that allows biological parents to help choose the recipient family.
Nightlight Christian Adoptions matched Archerd’s embryos with the Pierces, who met her criteria of a white, married Christian couple.
One of the embryos stopped developing, and two were transferred to Lindsey’s uterus in November 2024. One developed into a healthy pregnancy.
The embryo transfer was handled by Dr. John Gordon at Rejoice Fertility Clinic in Louisiana, a Christian-run facility focused on reducing the millions of embryos currently stored in freezers worldwide as a byproduct of IVF.
“We have certain guiding principles, and they’re coming from our faith,” Gordon said. “Every embryo deserves a chance at life, and that the only embryo that cannot result in a healthy baby is the embryo not given the opportunity to be transferred into a patient.”
Thaddeus now has a biological half-sister who is 30 years older and a niece who is 10, technically older than her uncle.
“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,” Archerd said, per The Guardian. “I pulled out my baby book and compared them side by side, and there is no doubt that they are siblings.”
While babies born from decades-old embryos remain rare due to concerns over viability, Thaddeus joins a small but growing number of successful cases.
Previous record-holding births had come from embryos frozen for 27 and 30 years, respectively.
In the US, approximately 2% of all births now result from IVF. In the UK, that number has risen steadily, accounting for over 3% of births in 2023, and nearly 11% for women aged 40 to 44, the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority revealed.
For the Pierces, this medical milestone is simply their miracle. “We had a rough birth, but we’re both doing well now. He is so chill. We are in awe that we have this precious baby," the new mom shared.