A baby has been born, after spending 25 years frozen as an embryo.
Emma Wren was born in Tennessee on November 25 (local time) to Tina Gibson, 26.
Baby Emma was conceived by an anonymous couple and frozen as an embryo in 1992. She and four siblings from the same egg donor are what's known as 'snowbabies' - potential human lives cryopreserved in storage to possibly be adopted and implanted into a new mother one day.
Ms Gibson and husband Benjamin had been unable to conceive naturally, and were considering foster care when they learned about embryo adoption. They successfully applied for the procedure and the couple then chose an embryo from 300 profiles, listing the genetic information of each set of donor parents.
Only when they agreed on their preferred viable embryo were they told how long it had been in cryopreservation.
"This embryo and I could have been best friends," Ms Gibson told CNN.
Baby Emma was thawed at the National Embryo Donation Centre in Tennessee in March 2017. She was then transferred into Ms Gibson's uterus, who carried her to term with no significant problems.
She was born weighing a healthy 6 pounds 8oz (3.08 kg), breaking a world record as the oldest known frozen embryo successfully born. The previous recordholder was 20 years old at the time of birth.
Ms Gibson told CNN that despite not sharing Emma's genes, she and her husband love her as their own child.
"We're just so thankful and blessed," she says. "She's a precious Christmas gift from the Lord."
Newshub.
