Baby twins were already 30 years old when they were born

Since the first “test tube” baby was born in 1978, scientific advancements in reproduction have come on leaps and bounds, so much so that twin babies recently broke the record for being born from the longest-frozen embryos.

On 31 October, the world’s “oldest” twins Timothy and Lydia were born in Oregon from what are believed to be the longest-frozen embryos to produce a live birth.

In April 1992, embryos for an anonymous married couple were created and frozen in order for the couple to do IVF in the future.

They were stored in cold storage at a fertility lab until 2007 when the couple donated them to the National Embryo Donation Center.

30 years later, the embryos were implanted, giving Rachel and Philip Ridgeway their “30-year-old” twin babies.

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The couple found their embryos while looking through embryo donor databases and noticed they were under the “special consideration” category – a group which denotes the embryos that have struggled to find a recipient.

Philip told CNN: “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.”

Of the five embryos that were thawed in February, two were not viable and the remaining three were implanted into Rachel. Two of the embryos were successfully planted and the twins were born late last month.

Philip said: “I was 5 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.”

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