- These circumstances are weird but true.
Twins born from 30-year-old frozen embryos have a mom that’s only three years older than they are. It seems unlikely but in this case, it’s true. Rachel Ridgeway gave birth to twins who were originally frozen back in April 1992.
The two new babies were born into this world to already mom-of-six, and are the product of the longest-frozen embryos known to have resulted in live birth. The previous record holder was a little girl born in 2017, Molly Gibson, who had been stored as a frozen embryo for 24 years.
It’s admittedly a bit weird of a situation but this is how Rachel and her husband Philip explain it. The two had gotten pregnant a whole three decades after the embryos were first frozen at the National Embryo Donation Center.
The twins biological parents have remained anonymous but have donated their leftover embryos to the center after going through a round of in vitro fertilization (IVF.) These embryos were stored in liquid nitrogen with thousands of others and the two successful embryos have finally resulted in a live birth.
Rachel, who’s now 34, gave birth to Timothy (six pounds and seven ounces) and Lydia (five pounds and 11 ounces,) last year on October 31st, when she was 37 weeks and two days.
“I was five years old when God gave life to these embryos,” Philip said.
The father described it all as mind-blowing to think about and added, “Pretty much everybody we’ve talked to has trouble wrapping their brain around it.”
The couple had their forth child arrive in 2020 and shortly after adopted the frozen embryos to conceive another child. 
Rachel stated: “We needed some fertility assistance to conceive our three oldest children.
“We decided to put the money that we would normally use for fertility care towards embryo adoption.”
“We wanted to follow that route.”
Philip then said that they would have more children if that was ‘God’s will’.
The 35-year-old explained: “We’ve always thought, ‘Let’s have as many kids that God wants to give us.’”
“We thought, ‘We’re not done yet if that’s God’s will.’”
The whole process started back in 2021 when Rachel and Philip selected their frozen embryos from the ‘special consideration’ part of the lab.
“These embryos are often overlooked because they were donated by parents who had a known history of certain genetic disorders,” Rachel said.
She added: “We found out that these kids are rarely looked at because many parents coming into the process are wondering what they could have.
“It didn’t really matter to us if they’re considered perfect or not.”
The parents were aware that the twins’ biological father passed from ALS and that it could possible be a leading factor in the twins having the genetic disorder but they said they ‘didn’t care.’
“Our plans for the twins is to make sure their adoption is a part of their story,” Rachel said. “We want to keep it as a normal part of their lives.”
She added: “They’ll always know that they are adopted.
“We want to make sure that they know that embryo adoption makes them special.”
Wow, the oldest frozen embryos yet are twins now. Congratulations to the whole family!
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