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I’ve heard some crazy stories in my lifetime, but this one takes the cake: An Ohio woman, Carolyn Savage, discovered 10 days after undergoing in-vitro fertilization that her fertility clinic had impregnated her with another couple’s embryo.
With all the IVF going on these days, I suppose this kind of thing is bound to happen, but the emotional and physical ramifications of such a mistake are almost unthinkable: Carolyn became ”an unwitting surrogate for another family.”
Mrs. Savage had already suffered enough in the pregnancy department:
Only the birth of the Savages’ first child was easy. Their second child, born almost three years later in 1997, was 10 weeks premature after Carolyn developed life-threatening complications.
“That was a scary time for us,” said Carolyn. Yet after she recovered, the Savages consulted with a doctor and remained intent on pursuing future pregnancies.
It would prove exceedingly difficult. Carolyn and Sean tried on and off for 10 years to have another child before turning to IVF. Eventually, Carolyn became pregnant with the couple’s third child, resulting in another difficult pregnancy and premature birth. Their daughter is now a healthy 18-month-old.
It would be easy to criticize Mrs. Savage’s decision to continue pursuing pregnancy given the history of complications, but freedom of choice is freedom of choice.
As a result of the initial IVF, the couple had 5 additional embryos stored at the clinic. Because Mr. and Mrs. Savage classify them as human life, according to their faith, they felt led to use the remaining embryos. When they tried to, they got someone else’s.
Mrs. Savage is now 39, and 35-weeks pregnant with someone else’s DNA-tested-and-confirmed baby — which will be given over to its biological folks at birth. As we can only imagine, it’s an emotional journey:
“As the process has gone along, it has been exceptionally difficult imagining this playing out,” Sean Savage said.
“There are so many ways to walk into that delivery room,” Carolyn. “We’re trying to mentally frame it instead of a loss — it is a loss, I don’t want to say that it isn’t — but we’re trying to look at it as a gift we’re giving someone else.”
In spite of this nightmare, the Savages will continue with their plans to implant their own spare embryos — this time in a surrogate.
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Wow, that is really unfortunate! I wonder if the woman from the other couple would be willing to be impregnated with one of Carolyn Savage’s embryo’s? Then they’d be surrogates for each other, and each would still end up witht their own baby.
Didn’t this happen on some medical drama episode?
Law and Order: SVU.
Yeah, SVU. There was a whole battle as to who the real mother was since the law states that the mother is who GIVES BIRTH to the child. With things like this happening, it’s really time that the law started evolving with science. I know she said that she would give the child up when it is born but I have a feeling we will be hearing about the custody battle in the coming months
these kind of mistakes should NOT happen
what a way of f***ing people’s lives!
These are the risks you take when you don’t get pregnant the old-fashioned way.
Just sayin’.
I’m sure that’s a real comfort to the many women who can’t conceive the old fashioned way.
Oh, come on, Rhonda. If a woman can’t conceive naturally, that’s just God’s way of saying she shouldn’t have children.
And being implanted with the wrong embryo is God’s punishment…
Sometimes I forget that it’s god’s will that some women never have a baby and other women pop out a couple of dozen. Silly me.
I don’t really care if it’s a comfort or not. It’s science.
Maybe if you can’t get pregnant it means you aren’t meant to have a child, not that you should go use in vitro and have 7.
I’m also of the mindset that disease and famine and natural disasters happen for a reason. God doesn’t play into it for me, it’s just a way of keeping the population in check. Sounds harsh but its how I feel.
This happened a while ago to another couple. It was the one couple’s last embryo and they couldn’t try again because the woman had had her ovaries removed because she had cancer.
The woman who had the wrong embryo implanted went and had an abortion as soon as she found out it wasn’t her baby.
There’s sort of no middle ground on this one. You either make the decision to kill somebody else’s baby, which kind of makes you a horrible person, or you have a baby for somebody else, which makes you a really good person.
Holy shit, this women lives in the same town as me.
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?section=news/local&id=7034175
she had the the little guy, poor family.