The mother and father of the “world’s oldest baby” have shared how they plan to explain their son’s unconventional birth to him one day.
Thaddeus Daniel Pierce was born just under a month ago, on July 26, to parents Tim and Lindsey Pierce (34 and 35) from Ohio. His birth made history because he came from an embryo that had been frozen for more than three decades, breaking the world record.
To put that into perspective, Tim and Lindsey were only toddlers when their son was conceived.
To understand how this remarkable situation came to be, we need to go back to 1994, when a woman named Linda Archerd (now 62) underwent IVF treatment with her husband.
They created four embryos, including the one that became their now‑30‑year‑old daughter. The remaining three — which Linda called her “three little hopes” — were frozen and stored, untouched, until 2024.
After separating from her partner and reaching menopause, Linda chose to donate the embryos to a program for hard‑to‑match embryos. Several clinics had previously refused to accept them because of their age.
Tim and Lindsey were eventually matched with Linda through the Open Hearts program, run by the Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency.
“We’d been trying for children for a while after we got married, and at one point we thought it was time to look into adoption,” Lindsey told LADbible.
“We went into different Christian adoption agencies and found Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which had a program called Snowflakes, which is embryo adoption.
“We had never heard of this, but we thought, ‘why not’? The timeline is shorter than international or domestic adoption, and the price is lower, too. We’d only been in the program for two years and we have a baby.” Ms. Pierce told MIT Technology Review that her family thought “it’s like something from a sci‑fi movie.”
Thaddeus’s embryo is believed to be the longest‑frozen embryo to result in a successful birth. The previous record — according to the BBC — was held by twins born in 2022 from embryos frozen in 1992.
Speaking to LADbible, Lindsey and Tim explained how they plan to tell Thaddeus about his historic birth once he’s old enough to understand.
“Snowflakes encourages open adoption and telling the child when they start to understand the process at their level, and then just increasing it as they get older,” Lindsey said.
“We’re in contact with Linda, so we want her to be part of the story, and then we will tell him he broke a record.
“We hope to meet her one day — she’s just across the country. We’ve been in contact with her since the beginning of the pregnancy. She’s loved every single update and picture about him. We want her to be a part of his life.”
Tim added, “We’ll show him some of the old articles when he’s old enough to understand what the articles are saying.”
The couple also shared a message for other parents struggling with fertility: don’t give up hope, even if the path looks different than expected.
Lindsey said, “For other families that are struggling to have their own children, to not give up hope. There’s always hope. It may not look like the way you think it should look, but there’s hope.”
