This is exciting. A woman recently had a baby from an embryo that had been frozen for seven years. She said, "I had no idea if I was having a little boy, a little girl–or fish sticks."

O’Brien’s joke riffs on the real-world strangeness of reproductive technology—specifically, the long-term freezing of embryos—by treating the outcome as comically unpredictable. The punchline (“or fish sticks”) exaggerates the uncertainty into absurdity, as if a frozen embryo might thaw into something processed and inedible rather than a human child. The humor depends on incongruity: a serious medical milestone is juxtaposed with a mundane, freezer-associated food item. Beneath the gag is a familiar late-night move: acknowledging a headline’s genuine novelty while deflating its solemnity, inviting the audience to process a potentially unsettling topic through laughter.