In a remarkable medical milestone, a baby boy named Thaddeus Daniel Pierce was born in Ohio from an embryo frozen in 1994, setting a new world record for the longest-frozen embryo to result in a live birth. The embryo, preserved for over 30 years, was donated by its biological mother, Linda Archerd, through a process known as embryo adoption.
Back in the early 1990s, Linda Archerd, now 62, underwent in vitro fertilization (IVF) after struggling with infertility for six years. The procedure resulted in four embryos.
One was implanted, leading to the birth of her daughter, now 30 years old and a mother herself. The remaining three embryos were cryopreserved, stored in a cryobank at a cost of about $1,000 per year.
After her divorce and entering menopause, Archerd faced a decision about the fate of her embryos. Unwilling to discard them, donate them for research, or give them anonymously to another family, she chose embryo adoption through Nightlight Christian Adoptions’ Snowflakes program, which allowed her to select a married, Caucasian, Christian couple in the US—Lindsey and Tim Pierce.
Lindsey, 35, and Tim, 34, from London, Ohio, had been trying to conceive for seven years before turning to embryo adoption. “We didn’t know they froze embryos that long ago,” Lindsey told MIT Technology Review. “We just wanted to have a baby.” Of the three donated embryos, one did not survive thawing, and two were transferred to Lindsey’s uterus in November 2024 at Rejoice Fertility in Knoxville, Tennessee. One successfully implanted, resulting in Thaddeus’s birth on July 26, 2025, after a challenging delivery. “He is so chill. We are in awe that we have this precious baby,” Lindsey said.
Archerd, who has yet to meet Thaddeus in person, was struck by his resemblance to her daughter. “I pulled out my baby book and compared them side by side, and there is no doubt they are siblings,” she said.
The process was not without hurdles: Archerd had to track down paper records from her fertility doctor in Oregon to facilitate the donation, and the embryos were shipped to Tennessee, where Rejoice Fertility, led by Dr. John David Gordon, specializes in transferring older embryos. Gordon, who also facilitated the previous record — a 2022 birth from embryos frozen for 30 years—noted, “These stories catch the imagination, but they also provide a cautionary tale: Why are these embryos sitting in storage?”
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This case highlights the advancements in cryopreservation, particularly vitrification, which minimizes ice crystal formation and improves embryo survival rates. It also underscores the emotional and ethical complexities of embryo adoption, with an estimated 1.5 million frozen embryos in the US alone, many in limbo following a 2024 Alabama Supreme Court ruling that granted embryos the legal status of children.
For Archerd, the donation brought relief, nostalgia, and hope for a future meeting with Thaddeus. For the Pierces, it fulfilled their dream of parenthood. As Lindsey put it, “It’s like something from a sci-fi movie.”
In a way, Thaddeus is older than most internet memes, patiently waiting in a freezer for three decades to become a “miracle” of modern medicine.
