54-year-old in Greece gives birth to girl from embryo frozen 22 years
Kristina Rapti-Tselepi carried a pregnancy from an embryo frozen in 2002—the same cohort used for her late son; family asks to remove Greece's IVF age limit.
A 54-year-old woman in Greece has given birth to a baby girl using an embryo that was cryopreserved in 2002, the same embryo cohort that produced her late son.
Kristina Rapti-Tselepi had first undergone in vitro fertilization in 2004 and later gave birth to a healthy son. That son died in a traffic accident in October 2025 at the age of 21 — a loss that prompted the family to pursue another pregnancy using embryos frozen more than two decades earlier.
The embryo transfer was performed recently at the private Genesis clinic in Athens. The pregnancy was carried to term despite the mother's age: Rapti-Tselepi is 54, which is the maximum age currently permitted for IVF treatment in Greece.
Konstantinos Pantos, the gynecologist who oversaw the case at Genesis, described the birth as both a scientific achievement and a deeply human act: "This birth is the result of science, but also of an inexhaustible will to live and hope," he said.
Her husband told reporters the family felt they were in "a true race against time" as they sought to complete the pregnancy under Greece's age limit for assisted reproduction.
The family has called for the removal of the upper age cutoff for IVF in Greece. In a written statement they argued that "Older women possess an invaluable capacity to give mature, conscious and unconditional love, as well as a stability that no statistic can fully measure."
Medical teams involved emphasized the emotional weight of the case alongside the technical aspects: while the memory of the lost son will remain, the arrival of the newborn — conceived from an embryo frozen in 2002 — has become a focal point for the family's grief and hope.
Photo: Ilustracija (AI)
