30 years ago, embryos were frozen and twins were born in Tennessee. Despite being the youngest, they are the couple's eldest children. Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway were born as twins on October 31 at a hospital in Tennessee, United States. According to CNN, if the twins had not conceived in 1992, their birth would have taken place as in any hospital.
Although they already have four more children, Rachel and Philip decided to expand their family a few years ago after learning about the concept of embryo donation. In this procedure, frozen embryos are implanted into the woman's embryo.
How are embryos frozen?
Couples who have difficulties in conceiving naturally, often resort to techniques such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF), in which male sperm and female eggs are fertilized in a laboratory environment to increase their chances of success. Donor eggs or sperm can also be used in this type of surgery, and often only a few embryos are produced, some of which are transplanted.
The remaining embryos can be donated for use in medical research, or frozen and stored for future use by other couples or families looking to start a family. Twins Lydia and Timothy were among five embryos frozen for an unnamed couple in April 1992.
These embryos were kept at a West Coast fertility clinic until 2007, after which the couple donated the embryos to the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) in Knoxville, Tennessee, in hopes of giving them 'adoption' to another couple. They were kept frozen in liquid nitrogen at temperatures close to 200 degrees below zero and remained there until 2007.
Even if there is no technical or legal adoption process, couples do not have to go through the costly and lengthy IVF process to choose to implant the embryos. Although parents with this condition may directly experience pregnancy and child rearing, they are not genetically related to the child.
NEDC, a private, faith-based organization, requires patients to have been in a married, heterosexual relationship for at least three years and undergo a family assessment before giving embryos for the medical process.
Parent candidates who have gone through this process can visit the database and select the embryos they want based on the donors' information such as ethnicity, age, height, weight, medical history, education, profession, and music preferences.
When Rachel and Philip Ridgeway learned of this possibility, they decided to give the frozen embryos a chance to develop into humans and chose the embryos that had waited the longest.
Five embryos were sent to a hospital, where they were resolved after 30 years of torture. The couple chose to transplant the three remaining embryos after two were determined to be viable, and the procedure was completed in March of this year.
Studies show that frozen embryos have only a 25-40% chance of giving birth to a live child; however, in this case, two of the three embryos survived. The twins' father, Philip, told CNN: “I was 5 years old when God gave life to Lydia and Timothy, and it has been that life ever since. “It has a mind-blowing quality to it. Although they are our youngest children, in some ways they are like our eldest.
Source: interestingengineering
📩 24/11/2022 09:49
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