Krystena Murray delivered a baby boy who was not biologically hers in December 2023, and she is now suing an IVF clinic over a mix-up after being forced to give up custody. After undergoing IVF at the Coastal Fertility Center in May 2023, the Georgia woman became pregnant.
According to CBS, it became evident that the embryo she was carrying belonged to another couple when the 38-year-old Murray gave birth to a child of a different ethnicity who did not look like her and the sperm donor she chose.
According to her lawsuit cited by 6ABC, she chose a sperm donor who resembled her “with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes.”
RELATED STORIES
However, Murray, a white woman, welcomed a black child in December 2023.
READ ALSO: Black mother takes DNA test after many claimed fair-skinned child wasn’t hers
She said during a press conference earlier this month, “So, the first time I saw my son, like any mom, he was beautiful and literally the best thing I’ve ever seen, but it was also immediately apparent that he was African American.
“I would like to say my first thought is, ‘He’s beautiful.’ My second thought was, ‘What happened? Did they mess up the embryo, or did they mess up the sperm? And if they messed up the embryo, can someone take my son?’ That was all within the course of the first 10 or 15 seconds of me seeing him.”
She never shared pictures of the child online or let her loved ones see him. The lawsuit against the clinic states that she eventually bought an at-home DNA kit, and the test results she obtained in late January 2024 verified she and the baby were not biologically related.
Despite the mistake, Murray wanted to keep the child and raised him for several months. In February 2024, she told the clinic about the mix-up. The biological parents were informed, and when the child was three months old, they filed a custody lawsuit.
When Murray’s legal team informed her that she had very little chance of winning in family court, she willingly surrendered custody when the child was five months old.
The child now goes by a different name and resides in a different state with his biological parents.
“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,” Murray said in a statement issued through her attorney. “I’ll never fully recover from this.”
According to the complaint, Murray is still unsure whether the clinic, Coastal Fertility Specialists, transferred her embryo to a different couple by mistake or what happened to it after that.
Her attorneys are requesting $75,000 in judgment as well as punitive damages, recovered attorney fees, recovered treble damages and all other costs.
Meanwhile, Coastal Fertility apologized for the inconvenience and admitted to the error in a statement to CBS News.
“This was an isolated event with no further patients affected,” the statement reads. “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.”
READ ALSO: This woman was mistakenly given an abortion pill when she wanted to get pregnant
