When Daphna and Alexander Cardinale first saw their newborn baby in September 2019, they immediately noticed that the little girl had darker skin and hair than the rest of the family, say their lawyers. “Genetic testing revealed that the baby Alexander and Daphna had delivered and raised for several months was not genetically related to them. Their baby was the biological child of complete strangers,” Peiffer Wolf continues. According to the complaint filed on Monday in a Los Angeles court, the embryos of two unrelated couples have been exchanged, presumably through negligence, and implanted in the woman who was not the egg donor.
A traumatic mistake for the two couples
After discovering this error, the two couples got to know each other and decided to regain custody of their genetic child, an exchange now formalized by the courts. But the error left traces and suffering, argues the Cardinale couple in their complaint, which seeks damages. “The birth of our daughter should have been one of the happiest moments of my life. But I was immediately shaken and disturbed that I did not recognize her”, said Alexander Cardinale.
“When the truth came out, swapping the children made it even more upsetting. Losing the child you know to the genetic child you don’t know yet is really _an impossible nightmare_“, he assures. IVF involves the insemination in the laboratory of an egg with a sperm, the fertilized egg being subsequently re-implanted in the mother’s uterus. The process is often used by couples who are having difficulty conceiving, and it can also include donation of an egg, sperm, or both.