Baby born four years after death of both parents

A surrogate mother in China gave birth to a baby boy whose parents died in a 2013 car crash, according to a report.

The biological parents had embryos frozen that they hoped would one day become their children during rounds of in vitro fertilization, the Beijing News reports. After their death, their parents fought a legal battle to use the embryos and hire a surrogate to carry them.

After the four grandparents won the right to the embryos, a woman from Laos became their surrogate and gave birth to a baby boy this past December.

There was no precedent for this kind of case in the country and even after the legalities were settled, the two couples could not move the embryos from their home at the Nanjing hospital without first proving that another would be able to store them. They decided instead to search for a surrogate outside of the country and found the woman from Laos.

She gave birth to Tiantian in China while visiting on a tourist visa, ensuring the boy's citizenship. Both sets of grandparents then had to undergo DNA testing to ensure that the boy was, in fact, their family.