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Molly Gibson was born in October of this year, but had already been in the making for 27 years.
Her embryo was frozen at the end of 1992 and remained so until February 2020, when Tina and Ben Gibson, in the state of Tennessee (USA), adopted her.
So it’s estimated that Molly set a new record for the longest frozen embryo to result in a birth, surpassing the mark of her older sister, Emma, born two years earlier.
“We’re on the moon, I always feel like I’m drowning,” Tina Gibson noted after the second birth.
The woman says she and her partner struggled with infertility for almost five years before learning more about adopting embryos.
“If you had told me then that I wouldn’t have just one girl, but two, I would have told you you were crazy,” he said.
Family
Gibson is an elementary school teacher and her husband works as a cybersecurity analyst.
The couple contacted the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC), a Christian nonprofit organization in the city of Knoxville that stores frozen embryos donated by patients in the fertilization process.
Families like the Gibsons can adopt one of the unused embryos and give birth to a child who is not genetically related to them.
There are about 1 million frozen embryos in storage in the United States, according to the NEDC.
Mark Mellinger, director of marketing and development for the entity, says the experience of infertility is common among families who request embryo donations.
“I would say that probably 95% have had some type of infertility,” he says.
“We are honored and privileged to do this work and to help these couples to grow their families,” he added.
After the first adoption of an embryo, Tina Gibson gave birth to Emma in 2017, trading sleepless nights praying for children for sleepless nights related to motherhood.
“It’s the best kind of fatigue,” he says.
Adoption
Founded 17 years ago, the NEDC has facilitated over 1,000 embryo adoptions.
Like a traditional adoption process, couples can decide whether they want a “closed” or “open” embryo adoption, allowing some contact with the donor’s family.
Couples are presented with between 200 and 300 donor profiles, as well as demographic histories of families.
The Gibsons, for example, had been looking for a child for so long that the options were overwhelming.
“We don’t care what the baby was or where it came from,” Tina Gibson said.
“My husband and I are smaller people (in stature), so we analyzed and reduced it based on height and weight and looked for something similar to ours,” she explained.
Gibson’s daughters, Molly and Emma, are genetic sisters.
The two embryos were donated and frozen together in 1992, when Tina Gibson was about a year old.
Emma’s 24-year-old embryo was the oldest in history to result in a birth, according to the NEDC, until Molly arrived this year.
Emma loves her little sister, according to her parents.
“She introduces anyone who sees her as ‘my little sister Molly’.
That’s why Tina is thrilled to see the similarities between her daughters, including a little wrinkle between the eyebrows when they are angry or upset.
According to the NEDC, the shelf life of frozen embryos is infinite.
However, the time is limited by technology.
“It’s very possible that one day a 30-year-old embryo will be born,” Mellinger says.
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