Assisted reproduction is expected to grow in popularity in China due to the two-child policy, which now allows couples to have a second child. (Photo : Getty Images)
In yet another marvelous scientific feat, a woman gave birth to her second baby in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province using one of her embryos she had frozen 16 years prior. The baby, weighing 3.8 kg, was delivered through natural birth at the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University.
The woman gave birth to her first child back in 2000 through in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment, which prompted her to have 18 more embryos preserved after being diagnosed with a health condition that led her to infertility, the GB Times reported.
Xu Yanwen, a professor and director of the hospital, said that the 16-year-old frozen embryo was the oldest one to have been born since it first offered the service back in 1994. The woman decided to have the baby shortly after the Chinese government announced an end to the "one child policy."
The process, however, was not particularly easy for the woman, given the complications provided by her age and the number of diseases she is currently suffering from, such as thalassemia and gestational diabetes, said her doctor Wang Zilian.
Xu added that services involving assisted reproductive technology, most notably IVF treatment, have become more popular among relatively-older women since the imposition of the new two-child policy last year. The hospital dealt with 1,000 requests from women over 40 years old in 2016 alone.
Assisted reproduction is expected to grow in popularity due to the two-child policy, which now allows couples to have a second child, although such has been remarkably slow in producing results due to economic pressures and concerns on social services, education, and childcare, Yibada reported.
The oldest recorded frozen embryo to have been born in China is 18 years, to a woman in Shanghai in June 2016. Considering the current changes, cases such as that one would no longer be regarded as usual due to the expectedly-exponential growth in demand for assisted reproduction.
