After their babies were born in 2019, two Southern California families occasionally wondered about what little resemblance the newborns had to their parents. Then, when the infants were just a few months old, they learned why: The fertility clinic where both had undergone IVF somehow mixed up their embryos, and each woman had unknowingly carried and delivered the other couple's biological daughter. When they met for the first time just after Christmas that year, the first thing the two women did was embrace for a long time.
"They took comfort in being with other people who could fully understand their surreal dilemma," writes Susan Dominus in an extensive piece on the families' experience. The piece delves into the regulations, or lack thereof, around IVF, as well as the legal battle one of the couples went through with the clinic. But the heart of the story is the families themselves, who made the decision to switch the girls back to their genetic families, but then raise the families (which both include older siblings) as closely together as they could.
The girls refer to the parents who raised them for the first few months of their lives as "Mama" and "Daddy" followed by their first names, and they consider each other sisters. Dominus says the families consider it "the happiest ending possible" to a shocking and devastating time in all their lives. Read the moving piece in full .
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After IVF Mix-Up, the 'Happiest Ending Possible'
After their babies were born in 2019, two Southern California families occasionally wondered about what little resemblance the newborns had to their parents. Then, when the infants were just a few months old, they learned why: The fertility clinic where both had undergone IVF somehow mixed up their embryos, and...