According to a well-known song, the planet we live on is fantastic. Even the singer, though, won’t be able to comprehend the miracle of a surrogate mother who delivered twins for a married couple only to learn the unthinkable one month later.
This is the story of Jessica Allen, a surrogate mother who was given the shocking news that she had given birth to both a biological kid and a child for a couple who had used IVF!
Allen, a 31-year-old mother of two grown sons from California who is a surrogate mother, decided to carry the baby of another couple. She desired to help a mother who was struggling to give birth to a kid of her own even if the $30,000 income (plus expenses) would benefit her family.
“No woman in the world should have to live their life without experiencing the love and the bond from a mother and a child,” she said.
Working with a San Diego-based surrogacy agency, Omega Family Global, Allen was matched with a couple from China, where the use of surrogates is illegal.
A single male embryo from the couple was inserted into Allen’s uterus in April 2016 at an in vitro fertilization facility in Irvine. Blood tests conducted nine days later revealed the pregnancy.
Unexpected news arrived six weeks later during her checkup; while examining her, her doctor said, “Well, I definitely see that there is another baby.”
“The chance of an embryo splitting is very small, but it does happen,” Allen’s doctor told her, adding that this split indicated the second child was an identical twin of the first. Allen experienced surprise and joy for the Chinese couple.
On December 12, 2016, Allen underwent a cesarean section at Riverside Community Hospital to give birth to what she believed to be identical twin boys. Although she never held the infants herself, she was shown a photo.
“I did notice one was much lighter than the other — you know, obviously,” she said. “They were not identical twins.”
There came some unexpected news a month later. A DNA test revealed that the second child was really Allen and her husband’s biological son and not the twin of the transplanted embryo.
David Haig, a professor of biology at Harvard University who was not involved in the surrogacy, wrote in an email, he said that “Superfetation is generally defined as becoming pregnant while the mother is already pregnant,” However, he added, “the surrogacy means that it doesn’t fit neatly into the classical definition of superfetation.”
Superfetation is sometimes suspected when twins, at birth, are very different sizes and so apparently different ages.
In such cases, Haig said, the mother is believed to have conceived a second time during an ongoing pregnancy.
Although the process was complicated, the couple was able to get custody of their biological son whose conception was literally one in a million. Ten-month-old Malachi was reunited with his parents in February, and although it wasn’t planned, they couldn’t be happier about it.
“He’s just so smart, so intelligent, you know,” Allen told ABC News.“He’s learning fast. He’s got two big brothers to run after and learn from.”
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