The Ridgeway twins may be less than a month old, but they’re already shattering records and making headlines around the world. The twins, born on October 31 to Rachel and Philip Ridgeway of Oregon, have a pretty unique origin story: They each came from donated embryos that were frozen 30 years ago.
Philip Ridgeway admits the whole thing is pretty wild
“There is something mind-boggling about it,” he recently told CNN during an interview about his twins, Lydia and Timothy.
According to CNN, the twin embryos were originally created for an anonymous married couple who were using IVF to conceive a child and were frozen on April 22, 1992.
At the time, doctors used sperm from the husband, who was 50, and a 34-year-old egg donor to create a batch of successfully fertilized embryos. But once the couple’s IVF journey was finished, they decided to keep the embryos frozen.
For the next 15 years, they sat in storage at a lab
Each embryo, including the ones that would eventually become Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway, was housed inside a tiny straw kept in liquid nitrogen at nearly 200 degrees below zero, CNN reports.
In 2007, the couple who originally created them decided to donate the embryos to the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. The couple hoped another couple could eventually use them to start their own family, and that the unused embryos could get a shot at life after all.
For another 15 years, the embryos sat in storage
But eventually, the right couple, the Ridgeways, came along.
The Ridgeways already have four children who range in age from 2 years old to 8. None of them were conceived through IVF or even by donor eggs/sperm. Still, when the couple heard about “embryo adoption” and the mission of the NEDC they decided to inquire about the process.
“We’ve never had in our minds a set number of children we’d like to have,” Philip told CNN. “We’ve always thought we’ll have as many as God wants to give us, and … when we heard about embryo adoption, we thought that’s something we would like to do.”
Earlier this year, the embryos finally made their way out of the freezer
And, according to Rachel, there was a reason she and her husband chose the ones they did.
“Going into this process, we wanted to choose children that in our eyes were the most unwanted, the most needy, the ones in our eyes were overlooked,” Rachel said.
Because of that, they were open to “older” embryos which other couples might steer clear of.
Once the embryos were ready, embryologists transfered them into Rachel’s uterus.
The babies, who entered the world on Halloween, are said to be happy and healthy, and are now at home with their parents and four siblings. But in the meantime, their incredible story has been making people’s jaws drop for days.
“I was 5 years old when God gave life to Lydia and Timothy, and he’s been preserving that life ever since,” Philip told CNN. “In a sense, they’re our oldest children, even though they’re our smallest children.”
But this isn't the first story of its kind
In 2017, baby Emma Gibson made headlines after she was born from an embryo that had been frozen for almost 24 years. Her parents, Tina and Benjamin Gibson, had struggled to conceive for years before they learned about “embryo adoption” and decided to give it a try. Then, through IVF, they too were able to finally become parents.
But they didn’t stop there. Three years later, Tina had another embryo implanted — one that had been frozen on the same day as Emma — and the couple welcomed a second daughter, Molly.
