ABC News
Surrogate Gives Birth to Twins, but One Was Biologically Her Baby
The human body truly is an amazing thing. Especially the female human body. Just when you think that falling pregnant with your own child while carrying the child belonging to someone else couldn’t ever happen — it does. And no, this is not the plot of a new sci-fi film.
Californian mom Jessica Allen, thought she was carrying the twins belonging to a Chinese couple who she agreed to be a surrogate for. In December of last year, Allen gave birth to two baby boys and handed them over to their parents.
It wasn’t until she saw a photo of the growing boys sometime later that she noticed something wasn’t right. Telling ABC news, Allen noticed that one of the babies had distinctly Chinese features while the other did not.
“You know, obviously they were not identical twins,” she said. Jessica and her husband, Wardell Jasper, later learned through DNA testing, one of the boys belonged to them. The couple then entered into a long and emotional legal battle to get their son back.
“I carried my own child and I didn’t know he was mine,” Jessica told ABC news through tears. The couple were finally granted custody of their little boy in February and they named him Malachi.
While it’s wonderful news that Malachi is with his true mom and dad, it is perplexing how this situation came to be in the first place. Superfetation is a medical phenomenon where a woman continues to ovulate after becoming pregnant. It’s extremely rare but, in such cases, fertilization and implementation of a second embryo can result in two babies with different gestational ages, and in Allen’s situation, two different sets of genetic parents.
The couple, who were married in April this year, explained to the New York Postthat they weren’t planning on expanding their family so soon, but now that they have Malachi in their lives – they would not have it any other way. “We treasure Malachi with all our hearts,” the happy mom said.
This post was written by Bettina Tyrrell. It originally appeared on our sister site, Now to Love.
