It was the month of July 2025 a healthy boy Thaddeus Daniel Pierce took his first breath in a hospital in Ohio. The world heard the cry, not only because a baby was born, but because medical history had been made: Thaddeus is the oldest baby to have ever been born. He was born from a 30 years old frozen embryo from the year 1994.
It is not solely about a record breaking story of baby Thaddeus. It is a story of hope and new technology and human connection that crosses three decades and two families connected by the promise of life across time.
The Beginning: Linda’s IVF Journey in 1994
Back in 1994, Linda Archerd, a young woman hoping to start a family, chose to undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF). At that time, IVF was still seen as advanced and somewhat mysterious. Linda and her then-husband created four embryos through the process. One embryo was implanted and eventually became her daughter, who would grow up, build her own family, and become a living connection to this extraordinary story.
The remaining three embryos were frozen and stored in a specialized medical freezer—a kind of time capsule where conditions remained perfectly preserved, almost untouched by the passing years.
A Frozen Baby and Mother’s Hope
Years passed, Linda and her husband finally separated but she did not forget the three little embryos in the frozen state. Thousands of dollars each year, she would spend to have them safely frozen, nowhere to destroy them or to give away anonymously. Linda thought: They are the biological siblings of my daughter. She had wished that someday she would find an adoptive family that would treat these embryos like she had loved and wanted to treat them.
What Happened Next?
Then, after more than three decades on ice, destiny brought together two families. In Ohio, Lindsey and Tim Pierce were longing to have children. Years later, and after much heartache and struggle, they learned of the uniqueness of Nightlight Christian Adoptions: their Snowflakes program is a special embryo adoption program that allows the donors and adopting family to choose one another based on their hopes, backgrounds, and dreams. The donor Linda had expressed a desire for a married Christian couple in the United States. The Pierces simply needed to love a child.
Eight years later, Linda had one of her long-frozen embryos thawed carefully in a clinic in Tennessee at Rejoice Fertility, which had a record of giving even the oldest embryos an opportunity to live. And with understanding and humble prayers, they inserted the small embryo in the womb of Lindsey. The science was successful against all odds. Lindsey was found to be pregnant and on July 26, she gave birth to a healthy baby, Thaddeus Daniel Pierce, who weighed 7 pounds and 4 ounces.
Reaction of Parents and The World
The miraculous event made big news all over the globe, but to the Pierces, it was something more personal. “We didn’t go into it thinking we would break any records,” Lindsey told the MIT Technology Review, which first reported the story. “We just wanted to have a baby.” Thaddeus was born over 30 years later compared to his biological sister, a feat that even beat the earlier record of the world holders of two twins born in 2022 after their embryos were frozen 30 years earlier.
Thaddeus is yet to meet his biological mother, Linda Archerd, but she already saw parallels between Thaddeus and her own daughter, who is aged 30 now and has a daughter of 10. Both children are biological siblings, Thaddeus and his sister are biological siblings, however, the start of their lives was at opposite ends of the world, and at different times, and the only thing connecting them is science and taking care of a mother.
What is remarkable about this event is not the years that the embryo remained in a frozen state. It is what it demonstrates about the progress of reproductive technology, the goodness of strangers and the hopes that families nurture over generations. At Rejoice Fertility, there is an attempt to give every embryo some chance without considering the time they have spent. The birth of Thaddeus is beyond what most people imagined is a reality, that an embryo which was frozen in the mid-nineties could remain intact, grow into a healthy child in 2025.
The phenomenon also leaves intriguing questions on the possibility of frozen embryos as more and more families and clinics across the world utilize IVF to secure their future. Technology that was once considered science fiction now makes miracles a reality-families that have been made possible decades after that first, uncertain step in a lab.
Thaddeus is More Than A Record
To the Pierces, Thaddeus is more than a record breaker; he is a prayer God has finally answered. To Linda Archerd, it is the completion of a cycle that started three decades ago and the realization the embryos she went to war over have brought peace and happiness to another family.
As baby Thaddeus grows, he will become part of the story that is likely to be retold for generations to come, all over the world as a story of science and hope transcending lifetimes. In Lindsey terms, “we have this beautiful baby, and everything was the result of a long journey that started long ago before anyone could have thought of it.
The world has its oldest baby born from a freezer older than the internet itself, marking a new era in the historic story of IVF, family, and medicine telling what science can achieve in this technology-driven life.
