My Record-Breaking Baby Was a Frozen Embryo for More Than 30 Years

This story is based on a conversation with Lindsey Pierce, 36, a former pre-school teacher from London, Ohio. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My husband, Tim, and I are huge nerds. We love TV series, such as “Star Trek” and “Stargate,” and all of the “Star Wars” movies.

So we couldn’t stop laughing when a friend heard the story behind our newborn, Thaddeus. They said it was like the plot of a science fiction or fantasy film because I was 4 and Tim was 3 when he was conceived.

It could also be a math puzzle. Our son spent 30 years and 4 months — that’s about 11,150 days for the number crunchers like us — as a frozen embryo. He was conceived via IVF in May 1994, cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen, and kept inside a storage facility.

Our son is a record breaker

His delivery broke the world record for the oldest known human embryo to result in a live birth. The achievement has been officially recognized by Guinness World Records because his embryo was frozen seven months before those of the previous record holders.

Timothy and Lydia Ridgeway, of Vancouver, Washington, will celebrate their third birthday at the end of this month. They were conceived in April 1992 and their embryos were kept in storage for 29 years and 9 months before being transferred.

Of course, our beautiful, bouncing boy is way more than a statistic. He is a long-awaited addition to our family after we spent eight frustrating years trying to have a child. He was born on July 26, 2025, when Tim, who works in data management in Columbus, Ohio, was 34, and I was 35.

We got married in July 2015 after meeting at the non-denominational church we still attend. I come from a large family, and we discussed our desire to have kids almost as soon as we started dating.

We had a series of fertility tests, which turned up nothing

It wasn’t until 2017 that we decided to try in earnest. It was important for us to live together and understand each other first. Our plan was to conceive in the fall so I could have the baby in late Spring and take the summer off from my teaching job.

Things didn’t work out that way because we didn’t get pregnant within a year. We had a lot of fertility tests, but the doctors came up with nothing. They said it was so-called ‘unexplained infertility.’

I was disappointed every month for two years. It was crushing to hear that friends and other members of the family were pregnant. Then, over time, I was able to be thrilled for them.

We’re religious and thought it was part of God’s plan for us to either wait a little longer or not conceive at all. We initially dismissed the idea of having IVF treatment because of the expense.

Then, in 2022, while skimming the internet, I read about a Christian-run embryo adoption agency based in Knoxville, Tennessee. It stores embryos that haven’t been used for a pregnancy. I wanted to learn more.

We didn’t care about the age or ethnicity of the embryo

We closed the door to other options and signed up. Once we met with the staff, they mentioned the “Open Hearts” program, which highlights embryos that are rarely chosen, mostly because many had been frozen since the days when IVF was relatively new. The age of the embryo didn’t matter to us because we believe that these babies deserve to be born.

People who want to adopt an embryo typically create a portfolio with personal photographs and write about their fertility journey. We said that we didn’t care about the age or ethnicity of the embryo.

We were ultimately matched with two families, one of which wanted to remain anonymous, while the other was happy to be identified. We transferred three embryos from the first family in December 2023. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. None of them took and we were devastated.

We were determined to try again, this time with the embryos belonging to the second family. We had looked at the photographs of the biological mother, who underwent IVF in 1994.

She had a daughter 30 years ago and paid for the preservation of her three remaining embryos. She eventually donated them, hoping another couple, like us, might accept them from the organization now called The Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency.

The transfer, which involved two embryos, was performed by Dr. John Gordon of Rejoice Fertility, also based in Knoxville, in November 2024.

One of the embryos failed to implant, but the other did. I was finally expecting. Tim and I were ecstatic at the thought of being pregnant.

The following nine months were straightforward. Thaddeus weighed 10 pounds at birth, yet I managed to deliver him without medication. I held him in my arms and thanked God for our blessing.

We’ll tell Thaddeus about his conception

For the first two weeks after his birth, I looked at my son almost in disbelief and said to Tim, “We have a baby.” We’re so grateful. Now, at 11 weeks, he is a happy, healthy baby who likes to jump in his swing.

We plan to meet our son’s biological mother when he’s older, and tell him about the circumstances of his conception. We’re so excited about it, we’ve already bought some books about donor embryos. As for holding the world record, I’m sure he’ll be proud of his sci-fi history.

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