A heart-wrenching story from start to finish
The parents who gave birth to the wrong baby have been reunited with their biological child after having raised someone else’s child for almost four months.
Daphna and Alexander Cardinale are suing the IVF clinic at California Center for Reproductive Health (CCRH) for mixing up the embryos which resulted in two couples raising the wrong children by mistake.
As you can see in the video below, the reunion between the biological child and her parents is a painful double-edged sword: on the one hand, there is undeniable love and relief; on the other is sadness, anger and grief that they had not only lost a daughter but missed all of the key moments throughout the pregnancy and newborn phase.
As explained in a recent ITV interview, following the birth in September 2019, the pair were pained to read the results of a DNA test that confirmed what they had denied but always suspected.
From the off, the two were surprised and confused at how their supposed child could possibly look so different from them and their first daughter, having arrived with a darker complexion.
Daphne describes how emotionally fraught the moment was, saying that she “looked at her and just didn’t know her at all”, adding that “I was losing a baby at the same time that I was getting a baby” – a truly impossible situation to imagine.
As awful as the entire experience must have been, the most difficult part, they say, was trying to explain this unfortunate situation to their five-year-old daughter. Alex commented that explaining how her “‘sister’ that they’ve imprinted on and love” is not really their sister, was beyond hard.
The couple’s claim against the clinic was officially filed on November 8, suing the facility for the unimaginable levels of emotional stress both between the birth and the swap in January 2020 and ever since.
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