A devastated Georgia woman is suing a fertility clinic for implanting the wrong embryo inside her, resulting in the baby being “ripped away” from her five months after she gave birth and bonded with the child.
Krystena Murray, from Savannah, underwent in vitro fertilization two years ago and only discovered the fertility clinic’s “reckless” mistake after she delivered a healthy baby boy in December 2023.
Murray and her sperm donor are both white. She said she “knew something was very wrong” when the child was born because she delivered a “dark-skinned, African American baby,” according to the lawsuit.
“It was obvious that there was no chance the child was biologically related to Ms Murray. The feeling was terrifying and shocking,” the lawsuit says. “Ms Murray had no issues or concerns with the baby’s race, other than the fact that it indicated to her that he clearly was not related to her.”
The 38-year-old filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday against Coastal Fertility Specialists, alleging the clinic’s negligence in mixing up her embryos with the other couple’s caused her ongoing pain and anguish. The clinic has said it “deeply regrets” the error and put safeguards in place to ensure it doesn’t happen to another couple.
“This has destroyed me. I’m heartsick; I’m emotionally broken. Nothing can express the shock and violation upon learning that your doctor put a stranger’s embryo into your body,” Murray said in a statement. “To carry a baby, fall in love with him, deliver him, and build the uniquely special bond between mother and baby, all to have him taken away. I’ll never fully recover from this.”
Her lawsuit says the clinic’s “extreme and outrageous” mistake caused Murray to be “turned into an unwitting surrogate, against her will, for another couple.” She’s seeking unspecified monetary damages.
Murray said the couple, who are not named in the lawsuit, sued her for custody last year. She volunteered to give up the baby, she said, after her lawyers told her she had no chance of winning in court.
Her attorney, Adam Wolf, said Murray still doesn’t know what happened to her own embryos. It’s still unclear how the mix-up occurred, he said.
Murray said becoming a mom was her lifelong dream. But she was robbed of that “profound, beautiful and life-altering experience” due to the mix-up.
While she bonded with her son, breastfed him, cuddled him, and “largely followed the same parenting book she had expected,” Murray also spent the first few months of her baby’s life fearing that someone was going to knock at her door and take the child away.
That fear kept Murray from posting pictures of the baby on social media, her lawsuit says, or even showing him to friends and family initially. Soon after she gave birth, Murray kept her newborn covered in a blanket to avoid questions at a funeral she attended.
Murray took a DNA test early last year that confirmed the baby didn’t come from one of her embryos. Wolf said his firm notified Coastal Fertility Specialists soon after because Murray hoped the clinic would improve its procedures and safeguards.
The clinic determined who the child’s biological parents were, Wolf said, and let them know Murray had given birth after receiving one of their embryos.
That was last May, when the baby was five months old. Murray said she hasn’t seen him since.
“I considered the consequences of IVF going in,” Murray said, including the risks of bleeding, infection, sterility and possibly death.
“Never once did I consider I might birth someone else’s child and have them taken from me,” she said. “And I feel like that should be something that women are aware of as an actual possibility.”
Since the boy was taken away, Murray decided to move out of the home where she raised him for the first five months of his life.
She could no longer live in her house “filled with memories of her little boy” because it became too painful. “She would imagine him sleeping soundly in the room that had been his bedroom; she would see him smiling in the kitchen; she would think of him looking in wonder at the tree in the front yard,” her lawsuit says.
The clinic said it “deeply regrets” the mix-up caused by “an unprecedented error” in a statement to NBC News.
“This was an isolated event with no further patients affected. The same day this error was discovered we immediately conducted an in-depth review and put additional safeguards in place to further protect patients and to ensure that such an incident does not happen again,” the clinic said.
