He is the “oldest baby” in the world, having developed from an embryo that was frozen almost 30 years ago.
Lindsey and Tim Pierce welcomed a son named Thaddeus Daniel Pierce on July 26, 2025, in Ohio.
Sky News said that the couple got the embryo from Linda Archerd, who is now 62, through a Christian embryo adoption business. This was the first documented birth from an embryo that had been preserved since 1994.
Lindsey told MIT Technology Review that they didn’t go into it believing they would break any records. We only wanted to have a child.
In the early 1990s, Archerd and her then-husband had trouble getting pregnant, so they had IVF and got pregnant with Thaddeus.
The therapy made four embryos, and one of them was given to Archerd. This led to the birth of her daughter, who is now 30 and a mother herself. The other three embryos were frozen for later use.
After being divorced and going through menopause, Archerd thought again about what would happen to the embryos.
She didn’t like the thought of giving them to science or leaving them anonymously, so she chose “embryo adoption.” This is a more involved way to donate embryos that lets biological parents assist choose the family that would get them.
Nightlight Christian Adoptions found the Pierces to be a good match for Archerd’s embryos because they were a white, married Christian couple.
In November 2024, two embryos were moved to Lindsey’s uterus, but one of them stopped developing. One of them turned into a healthy pregnancy.
Dr. John Gordon of Rejoice Fertility Clinic in Louisiana did the embryo transfer. This Christian-run clinic’s goal is to reduce the millions of embryos that are being preserved in freezers around the world as a result of IVF.
Gordon maintained that we had some guiding principles because of our beliefs. The only embryo that is incapable of producing a healthy child is the one that is not given the opportunity to be transferred to a patient. All embryos should get the opportunity to survive.
Thaddeus now has a biological half-sister who is 30 years older and a niece who is 10, which makes her technically older than her uncle.
Archerd told The Guardian that the first thing he noticed when Lindsey brought him images of his son was how much he looked like his daughter when she was a baby. I took out my baby book and looked at them side by side. There is no mistake that they are siblings.
Due to concerns about their viability, babies born from frozen embryos that have been kept for decades are still rare, although Thaddeus is one of a small but increasing number of successful examples.
The prior births that held the record were from embryos that had been frozen for 27 and 30 years, respectively.
IVF now accounts for about 2% of all births in the US. The Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority said that in the UK, that figure has been continuously rising, reaching over 3% of births in 2023 and about 11% for women aged 40 to 44.
This medical milestone is just a miracle for the Pierces. We had a hard time giving delivery, but we’re both doing great now. He seems very relaxed. The new mom said, “We are in awe that we have this precious baby.”