Parents of world’s oldest baby reveal how they will tell him
In a quiet corner of Ohio, Tim and Lindsey Pierce are navigating the standard sleepless nights and joy of new parenthood. But their son, Thaddeus Daniel Pierce, is anything but standard. Born on July 26, Thaddeus has already secured a place in the history books as the “world’s oldest baby,” having been born from an embryo frozen for over three decades.
The technicality of Thaddeus’s birth is a dizzying feat of science: when his embryo was first conceived and cryopreserved, his now-parents, Tim (34) and Lindsey (35), were merely toddlers themselves.
The Journey from 1994 to 2024
To understand the magnitude of this record-breaking arrival, one must look back to 1994. It was then that Linda Archerd, now 62, underwent IVF treatment with her husband. The procedure resulted in four embryos. One became Archerd’s daughter, who is now 30 years old. The remaining three—tenderly nicknamed her “three little hopes”—were placed into deep-freeze storage.
For thirty years, those “hopes” remained untouched. Following a separation from her partner and her own transition into menopause, Archerd felt a profound calling to donate the embryos. However, the path to donation was fraught with bureaucratic hurdles; several clinics rejected the trio, citing their advanced age as a liability.
Eventually, Archerd found the Open Hearts program, managed by the Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency. Simultaneously, the Pierces were searching for a way to grow their family after years of struggling with infertility.
A “Sci-Fi” Path to Parenthood
“We’d been trying for children for a while after we got married, and at one point we thought it’s time to look into adoption,” Lindsey Pierce told LADbible. Their search led them to Nightlight’s “Snowflakes” program, which specializes in embryo adoption—a concept that was entirely new to the couple.
“We had never heard of this, but we thought ‘why not’?” Lindsey recalled. “The timeline is shorter than international or domestic adoption and the price is lower, too. We’d only been in the programme for two years and we have a baby.”
Speaking with the MIT Technology Review, Lindsey admitted that the circumstances surrounding Thaddeus’s birth felt like “something from a sci-fi movie.”
According to reports from the BBC, Thaddeus’s birth breaks the previous world record set in 2022 by twins who were born from embryos frozen in 1992. Thaddeus, having spent thirty years in stasis, now stands alone as the longest-frozen embryo to result in a successful live birth.
Navigating the Truth
With such a unique origin story, Tim and Lindsey are already planning how to share the truth with their son. Guided by the “Snowflakes” philosophy of open adoption, they intend to introduce the concept of his birth gradually.
“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 explained.
The Pierces have maintained a close relationship with Linda Archerd throughout the pregnancy and beyond. “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,” Lindsey said. “She’s loved every single update and picture about him. We want her to be a part of his life.”
Tim Pierce added that when the time is right and Thaddeus is old enough to comprehend the media attention, they will show him the headlines he made before he could even crawl. “We’ll show him some of the old articles when he’s old enough to be able to understand what the articles are saying.”
A Message of Persistence
As they settle into life with their record-breaking newborn, the Pierces are using their platform to offer a beacon of light to other couples facing the uphill battle of infertility.
“For other families that are struggling to have their own children, to not give up hope,” Lindsey shared. “There’s always hope. It may not look like the way you think it should look, but there’s hope.”