Baby who was conceived just a year after her mother is born

A woman has given birth to a baby that was conceived just one year after she was born herself.

Emma Wren was born to Tina and Benjamin Gibson weighing in at a healthy three kilograms on November 25.

She now holds the record for being the oldest frozen embryo to be born, according to the University of Tennessee Preston Medical Library staff.

In October 1992, when Tina Gibson was just eighteen-months-old, an unidentified couple who had used in vitro fertilisation (IVF) froze their fertilised egg.

The embryo was thawed in March this year and implanted in Tina Gibson at the National Embryo Donation Centre in Knoxville.

“Emma is such a sweet miracle,” her father Benjamin said.

“I think she looks pretty perfect to have been frozen all those years ago.”

The Centre’s Lab director Carol Sommerfelt, who thawed the embryo, told USA TODAY she’d never forget 25-year-old Tina Gibson’s comment when she was shown a picture of the embryos at the time of transfer.

“These embryos could have been my best friends,” she said.

“I just wanted a baby. I don’t care if it’s a world record or not,” she told CNN.

Ms Sommerfelt told USA TODAY it is rewarding to see an embryo that has been frozen for so long have a chance at life, especially with cryopreservation techniques advancing since the 1990’s.

The technique involves preserving the embryos at very low temperatures as unprotected freezing can cause serious damage.

The centre is a faith-based, not-for-profit that encourages couples to donate embryos after their families are complete so that other couples, who cannot conceive, can try and have a baby.

The Gibsons have been married for seven years but were unable to have children as Mr Gibson has cystic fibrosis and infertility is not uncommon among patients.

They were planning to adopt when Tina’s father told them about the Centre’s “snow baby” program, so-called because of the low temperatures the embryos are stored at.