This is the world’s oldest baby: Meet the newborn from Ohio who has a 30-year-old sister
A birth three decades in the making has left two families connected by science, chance and a little miracle.
The world’s oldest baby, Thaddeus Daniel Pierce, has been born in London, Ohio. Do not adjust your screen, or wipe your glasses, for that statement is as perplexing as it seems.
Aren’t all babies the same age when they are born? Technically, yes, although there is an explanation for what makes his particular newborn a record-breaker.
Embryo donation leads to record-breaking “oldest” baby
Thaddeus is the son of Tim and Lindsey Pierce, who have finally been able to start a family thanks to embryo donation, a relatively common practice, having unsuccessfully tried for a baby for seven years.
What determines Thaddeus’ “oldest baby” status is the fact the Pierces adopted an embryo created in 1994, when the new parents were only young children.
Linda Archerd created four embryos over 30 years ago with her then-husband, helping her give birth to a baby girl in the mid-1990s. The remaining three were cryopreserved for the future, but the couple ultimately divorced and Linda never had the opportunity to use them herself.
After she reached menopause, she looked into donating the embryos, signing up for the same program as the Pierces. After the two parties matched, Lindsey had two embryos transferred to her uterus (the third was no longer viable), one developed into a fetus and subsequently record-breaking Thaddeus.
Newborn baby set to meet 30-year-old sister
That means Thaddeus technically has a 30-year-old sister, as Lindsey herself explained to the MIT Technology Review. And it appears there’s a good chance they might meet one day.
Linda, who claims Thaddeus resembles her daughter as a baby, revealed it would be a “dream come true” to see him in person, calling the newborn “perfect.”
Lindsey, meanwhile, has admitted the circumstances under which Thaddeus was born are somewhat unorthodox, which relatives and members of her church describing the situation as “something from a sci-fi movie.”
“We didn’t go into it thinking we would break any records,” says the new mother. “We just wanted to have a baby.”
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