Two families in California gave birth to exchanged children after an error by an IVF clinic, which mixed the embryos, according to the lawsuit they filed against the establishment.
After the error was identified, the families exchanged the babies, already a few months old, in a process fraught with trauma, according to Daphna Cardinale, one of the mothers.
The case took place in Los Angeles, where the CCRH (California Center for Reproductive Health) clinic is located, the target of the lawsuit for medical misconduct, breach of contract, negligence and fraud.
Daphna and Alexander Cardinale came to the clinic in 2018 to undergo in vitro fertilization, a procedure in which eggs are fertilized by sperm in the laboratory, before being transferred to the pregnant woman’s uterus.
In September 2019, the girl was born as a result of fertilization. The scare came already at birth, when they noticed that the baby did not look like its parents and had darker skin. “It was so shocking that Alexander took several steps back and hit the wall,” they claim in the lawsuit, according to the BBC report.
Almost three months later, the couple decided to have a DNA test, which determined that there was no genetic relationship between parents and daughter.
“I was overwhelmed by feelings of fear, betrayal, anger and disgust,” Daphna said in an interview with journalists on Monday (8). “I was deprived of the ability to carry my own daughter. I didn’t have the opportunity to raise her and relate to her during pregnancy, to feel her kicks.” She reported a mixture of feelings between apprehension and attachment to the child.
“The Cardinales, including his daughter [mais velha, de 7 anos], fell in love with this child and were afraid that it would be taken from them,” says the lawsuit, according to the Associated Press news agency. “All along, Alexander and Daphna didn’t know where their own embryo was and therefore they had fear that another woman was pregnant with her child—and her child was somewhere in the world without them.”
The clinic helped them find the family that handled the couple’s embryo, who also gave birth to a girl, a week apart — the other family decided to remain anonymous and did not participate in the interview about the case this week, but they are also part of it. of the case against the establishment.
Four months after the birth, the two families met and decided to formalize the exchange of babies in court, which happened in January 2020. “The horror of this situation cannot be understood”, says the lawsuit.
“Instead of breastfeeding my own daughter, I nursed and bonded with a child that I later had to give up,” Daphna said in the interview. “Swapping the kids made it all the more disturbing,” said the father, Alexander.
The couple is now being treated for anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the lawsuit.
This is not the first case of an embryo exchange in the United States, according to the BBC. In 2019, another California couple discovered that their genetic child had been gestated in New York—the family secured custody of the child in court.
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