An American infant born over the weekend set a record for the world’s oldest baby. The baby boy developed from an embryo frozen in 1994.

Thaddeus Pierce was born Saturday to parents Lindsey Pierce, 35, and Tim Pierce, 34, residents of London, Ohio. Baby Thaddeus was conceived three decades ago when his parents were just toddlers, frozen in the hopes of one day being born to the embryo’s donor, Linda Archerd, 62, according to MIT Technology Review.

At 31 years after being frozen, Thaddeus set a record for oldest human embryo used in a successful pregnancy. The previous record was 30 years and 192 days, set by a pair of twins born to Americans Rachel and Philip Ridgeway in 2022, according to Guinness World Records.

“We didn’t go into it thinking we would break any records. We just wanted to have a baby,” Ms. Pierce told MIT Technology Review.

The embryo that became Thaddeus was one of four created and frozen in 1994. Besides him, Ms. Archerd gave birth to a girl who is now an adult.

Ms. Archerd never implanted the remaining embryos and eventually donated them to Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which has a program that adopts out frozen embryos through in vitro fertilization.

Though one of the three embryos stopped growing after being thawed, the other two were implanted in Ms. Pierce in November. One grew into Thaddeus; the other didn’t develop into a fetus.

The couple used the same Tennessee in vitro fertilization clinic used by the Ridgeways.

Ms. Pierce told MIT Technology Review that the whole process was “like something from a sci-fi movie,” noting in particular that the infant Thaddeus has a 30-year-old biological sister with a child of her own.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.