A Georgia woman has filed a lawsuit against a fertility clinic after she gave birth to another couple’s baby.
Krystena Murray, a 38-year-old wedding planner, said she was shocked when she gave birth to a dark-skinned baby after undergoing the painful in vitro fertilization (IVF) process to get pregnant in 2023.
Murray, who is Caucasian, learned there was a mix up at Coastal Fertility Clinic, and the wrong embryo was implanted into her uterus.
Murray had chosen a sperm donor who looked like her — a Caucasian man with dirty blond hair and blue eyes.
But the baby she gave birth to was dark-skinned with tightly coiled hair.
“My first thought was he’s beautiful,” Murray said in an online press conference on Tuesday. “My second thought was, ‘What happened? Did they mess 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,” said the single mom, who lives in Savannah.
“What was supposed to be the happiest moment of my life — and honestly, it was — was also the scariest moment of my life,” she said. “While my child was born healthy and he remains the most beautiful human I will ever lay eyes on, it was immediately apparent that something did not go to plan.”
Murray raised the boy for five months. Her attorney contacted the fertilization clinic, which matched the child’s DNA to a Black couple who were previous clients.
The couple took legal action, demanding custody of their son.
In May 2024, Murray tearfully handed the baby over to his biological parents.
Murray told a judge she had become “fiercely attached” to the baby after he was born.
“My baby is not genetically mine… But he is and will always be my son,” Murray said. “To carry a baby, to fall in love with him, to deliver him, to build that uniquely special bond between a mother and a child, all to have them taken away; I’ll never be the same woman.”
In her lawsuit, Murray said she does not know if Coastal Fertility transferred her embryo to another woman, and if her biological child is being raised by someone else.
“This is the cardinal sin for fertility clinics, to transfer the wrong embryo into one of your patients. It should never happen,” Murray’s attorney, Adam Wolf, said.
