25-year-old woman gives birth from embryo frozen 25 years ago

A father holds his baby.
(Image credit: iStockphoto)

Newborn infant Emma Wren Gibson and her mother, Tina, already have something in common: They were both conceived in the early 1990s.

In 1992, the embryo that became Emma Gibson was frozen and donated to a religious clinic in Knoxville, Tennessee. In 2017, Tina Gibson, 25, and her husband, Benjamin Gibson, adopted the embryo, and on Nov. 25, they welcomed Emma. "I think she looks pretty perfect to have been frozen all those years ago," Benjamin Gibson said in a statement.

Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, told NBC News it's possible Emma set a record for being the oldest embryo transferred to a woman's uterus, but there's no way to determine it because of privacy laws. The length of time an embryo is frozen is "not very important," Tipton said, as the risks come when the embryo starts to thaw. If it makes it through that stage, it has the same chances of resulting in a healthy pregnancy as any other embryo.

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Catherine Garcia

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.