Beijing - China's adoption of a two-child policy last year has
spurred a woman in Guangdong province to give birth to a baby from a
16-year-old frozen embryo, Chinese state media reported on Tuesday.
A healthy baby boy was born in early February to a 46-year-old woman
at the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University in
Guangzhou, the Xinhua news agency reported.
The woman has another 16-year-old son, who was born through in-vitro
fertilization from the same batch of embryos, which were frozen in
2000.
After China lifted its long-standing one-child policy last year, the
woman came back to the hospital and asked to get pregnant again,
Xinhua said.
"There were a few issues to handle when she asked to unfreeze her
embryos," Xu Yanwen, director of the hospital's reproductive centre,
told Xinhua. "It was not easy to awaken the frozen embryos because of
the freezing techniques."
More than 1 000 women above 40 years old approached the hospital last
year wanting to have more babies, Xu told Xinhua.
China last year ended its controversial one-child policy, which had
been in place since 1979. Families are now allowed to have a maximum
of two children.