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- A woman is suing a fertility clinic after doctors transferred another couple’s embryo into her uterus.
- A DNA test proved the baby belonged to another couple using the clinic’s services.
- The woman raised and bonded with the baby for months then lost custody.
Krystena Murray knew something was wrong the moment she first saw her baby.
Murray, 38, is a white woman who elected to have a white sperm donor for her IVF procedure. She gave birth to a baby boy in late December 2023. Her baby was Black.
After taking a DNA test and reaching out to her fertility clinic, she learned that another couple’s embryo was transferred into her uterus.
While she fell in love with her newborn, and bonded with him, he wasn’t genetically hers. Within five months, she lost full custody of the child to his legal parents — another couple at the clinic.
“I’ve never felt so violated,” Murray, who is suing Coastal Fertility Specialists in Savannah, Georgia, said in a press conference with Peiffer Wolf, the firm representing her.
She said she felt “emotionally and physically broken” after having to give up a child who, until he was born, she believed was hers, and one she grew attached to ever since.
5 months of bonding
Murray had wanted a child for a long time. She’d found a sperm donor — a white man who, like her, had blue eyes and dirty blonde hair — to create embryos.
The moment she delivered the little boy, she felt conflicted. She’d carried him to term and delivered him. As she cuddled him and breast-fed him, she felt a deep sense of bonding.
“The birth of my child was supposed to be the happiest moment of my life, and honestly it was,” she told reporters on Tuesday. “It was also the scariest moment of my life.”
She had questions about their unexplained racial difference and didn’t know what to do. Murray said she didn’t post photos on social media or let her loved ones meet her child because she knew they’d have questions, too. Every time the doorbell rang, she worried it was someone coming to take her child away, she said.
A month after giving birth, she got the results of a DNA test she requested. It confirmed what she feared: she was not related to the baby.
The biological parents sued Murray for custody
By March 2024, the clinic realized the wrong embryo had been transferred. Coastal Fertility Specialists contacted the genetic parents of Murray’s baby, who sued Murray for custody. Murray hired legal help in multiple states to fight the lawsuit.
Another DNA test confirmed that the couple was related to the baby. Murray’s legal team advised her to give up custody, knowing she would lose the family-law case. She gave up the baby in May 2024 and hasn’t seen him since.
Murray said the emotional aftermath has been difficult for her. “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,” she said. “I’ll never fully recover from this.”
While the experience made her wary of undergoing IVF again, Murray is currently undergoing the process again at a different clinic.
“I’m hoping to continue my journey to be a mom in the next year or two,” she said.
Business Insider has contacted Coastal Fertility Specialists for comment.
Fertility clinic mishaps
This isn’t the first time a fertility clinic is at the center of a major lawsuit. In January, a couple sued a clinic after an error in the IVF process destroyed their embryos.
Other high-profile lawsuits involved a woman learning her mother’s fertility doctor was her father and patients suing a clinic after a tank malfunctioned and destroyed 3,500 frozen eggs and embryos.
In a press conference, Wolf said he’s represented clients of Coastal Fertility Specialists whose embryos were dropped on the ground or had embryos mixed with the wrong sperm or eggs.
This is the first time Wolf’s firm has sued Coastal Fertility Specialists.
