Couples have to trade babies after fertility center mixed up embryos, lawsuit says

[Jilly_in_VA]

When Daphna Cardinale became pregnant with her second daughter in January 2019, she was overjoyed. The in vitro fertilization process was a success, and she savored the next nine months, knowing the pregnancy would probably be her last.

But when the girl was born that September, Daphna and her husband, Alexander, were shocked. Alexander took several steps away from the birthing table, backing up against the wall, when he first saw the baby’s jet-black hair and complexion that was darker than his, his wife’s and their first daughter’s.

Even after they brought the girl home, Alexander could not shake the dissonance. The couple’s family and friends noticed, too, saying they were surprised the girl looked so different and even asking if the embryo had been donated. Alexander sometimes felt he had to joke that the baby girl was not his daughter.

In fact, the couple soon learned, she wasn’t.

According to a lawsuit the Cardinales filed Monday, the fertility clinic that facilitated the in vitro pregnancy, the California Center for Reproductive Health, implanted another couple’s embryo into Daphna. Their own embryo, the Cardinales learned, was implanted into the mother of the child to whom Daphna gave birth. In other words, the Cardinales allege, the fertility clinic mixed up the embryos — a mistake that forced the couples to trade their babies after months of raising them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/09/in-vitro-fertilization-ivf-mix-up-daphna-cardinale/
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What do you do in a case like this?

[phylny]

1. This is horrible.

Our granddaughter is three months old and I cannot imagine the pain of finding out a child is not yours and then, after having nurtured and loved the baby, giving the baby up to someone else. I hope this and the other couple get a boatload of money, but even that won’t help heal the wound of what happened in this case.

[madaboutharry]

2. I would certainly want my own child.

The couples did the right thing, but coming to terms and agreeing to take their own babies back doesn’t lessen the wrong or the trauma they suffered.

I also hope they are successful in their lawsuits.

[Torchlight]

3. I couldn't imagine the heart-wrenching decisions these couples are forced to confont.

Solomonic wisdom of this scale just isn't my wheelhouse and I think my brain would freeze.

[Deuxcents]

4. Will there be DNA issues?

[Hekate]

5. DNA tests have already confirmed parentage, so there shouldn't be a problem inthat regard

[eShirl]

6. maybe they could get a duplex together, or at least live nearby

[Hekate]

7. LA Times ran the story this morning, as it's a SoCal story. Sometimes sht happens...

That’s not an excuse by any means. Fertility procedures are very exacting and very expensive, and there’s an emotional roller-coaster.

My neighbor across the street is from New Jersey, and one of her nieces gave birth to twins close to 20 years ago. It was supposed to be uncomplicated in that her eggs and her husband's sperm were to be used. They are white. The babies were not, and as in this case, it was apparent at once. She was definitely the genetic mother, though.

So they just dealt with it. They decided they would rather have their privacy than stir up whatever would happen with a lawsuit. Every so often my friend gives me an update, and the kids are in college now. I have wondered sometimes how the young people have dealt with it — I kind of got the feeling there was a bit of adolescent chafing over identity, but I hope that was resolved.

Cases where babies are actually switched are much harder, I think, because you bond to the infant in your home, and then have to give it up.

[Iggo]

8. After years, you leave it alone. After a few months, you gotta do the right thing and trade babies.

It’s fucked up, but it’s the right thing to do.

[hunter]

9. Easy, just do what's best for the kids.

It seems to me a gradual trade off would work well, and then treat everyone as family.

The kids can be cousins, the birth parents aunts and uncles.

Natural biological family relationships can be just as complicated.

It's patriarchal society that twists itself into a knot about "true" paternity. Thanks or no thanks to modern medicine this situation happens to involve maternity as well.

The people who raise the children are the parents. Make these kids lucky, let them enjoy larger extended families than the might have had if there'd been no accident, clinic negligence or not.

All four parents have made an effort to stay in each other’s lives and “forge a larger family,” Cardinale said, which is the way it ought to be.

There's not a child on earth who choses before their birth who their parents will be. Most of us get lucky, too many are unlucky, and some, like these children, will have interesting stories to tell.