A 26-year-old American woman has given birth to a baby that grew from an embryo frozen 24 years earlier, in what could be a record length between the donating of an embryo and the delivery of a child.

Tina Gibson, of east Tennessee, was 25 when she gave birth to Emma Gibson in November. Emma grew from an embryo that was originally frozen on 14 October 1992.

“If the baby was born when it was supposed to born, we could have been best friends,” Tina Gibson told NBC News.

The embryo was transferred into her mother’s uterus by the National Embryo Donation Center, a faith-based organization in Tennessee.

“We’re just so thankful and blessed. She’s a precious Christmas gift from the Lord,” Gibson said, according to CNN. “We’re just so grateful.”

Frozen embryos are sometimes known as “snow babies”. After a couple goes through IVF treatment there are sometimes leftover embryos, which are frozen for potential later use.

The National Embryo Donation Center encourages people to donate those embryos to other couples who are unable to conceive. The organization’s website says it believes that life begins at conception and states: “Christian faith is the overriding principle upon which we operate.” It only donates embryos to a man and a woman, who must have been married for at least three years.

The NEDC’s Dr Jeffrey Keenan oversaw the embryo transfer. He said it was impossible to be sure whether it had set a record in the process of being born, but it was likely.

“We had our medical library, which is very good at finding things, look to see if they could find anything older than that and they could not,” Keenan told NBC News.

“But it is kind of neat that this embryo was conceived just a year or so before the mother was.”