A California couple is speaking on behalf of themselves and another couple whose lives were changed when they learned an in vitro fertilization mix-up led to them carrying, birthing, and raising each other's children.
Alexander Cardinale had an inkling something was wrong when his wife, Daphna, gave birth to their child. He shook it off as new dad nerves, but later he would learn there was something more behind his feeling. Daphna had been implanted with another couple's embryo by mistake, while their embryo was implanted in the woman from that couple, who has chosen to stay anonymous.
Now the Cardinales and the other affected family are fighting back in a lawsuit against California Center for Reproductive Health (CCRH), where the procedures were performed, as well as its owner, Dr. Eliran Mor. Both CCRH and Dr. Mor are accused of medical malpractice, breach of contract, negligence, and fraud.
Alexander Cardinale remembers looking at his baby girl at birth and feeling something unusual.
"It was sort of a primal reaction," he told People.
He remembered thinking his daughter looked nothing like him or his wife, Daphna.
"It was a little jarring, but I shook it off and cut the umbilical cord," he noted.
Alexander and Daphna discussed his feelings about the baby but continued to parent their little girl, born in September 2019, who joined their 5-year-old daughter, Olivia.
Still, they couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss.
"If we hadn't done IVF, I would've just chalked [the lack of resemblance] up to genetics," Alexander said.
"She just looks how she looks. No big deal. But because we'd done IVF, my brain started going to the dark place."
Daphna tried to convince her husband he was mistaken. "She looked really different than us, but she felt so familiar to me because I carried her and I birthed her," she said.
Friends and family would also share comments about how little the baby girl resembled her parents.
Daphna and Alexander ignored the chatter as they enjoyed bonding as a family of four.
"It was this moment of sheer bliss when everybody is getting to know each other and falling in love with each other," Daphna, a therapist, shared.
"She just really folded into our lives and into our hearts."
A month after giving birth, an employee of CCRH reached out and asked the couple to send in a photo of the baby.
"It seemed odd," said Alexander, a musician.
"I thought, 'Do they know something we don't know?'"
There was no immediate explanation, so a frustrated Daphna purchased a home DNA test. It was then, in November 2019, that they learned the truth.
"We got an email that basically said that she was genetically related to neither of us," recalls Alexander.
"That's when our world started falling apart."
The two rushed to hire an attorney as their thoughts raged. Where was their biological child? What would happen to the child they'd raised and fallen in love with? It was then they learned the lab used by the clinic had mixed up the embryos and that the baby Daphna had given birth to belonged biologically to the couple who had birthed the Cardinales' baby.
DNA testing confirmed on Christmas Eve 2019 that the two women had given birth to each other's children. For a while, the four parents tried switching off the babies for a brief periods as they wrapped their heads around what happened. By January 2020, they decided it was time for each couple to take home their biological child.
Thankfully, the couples lived just 10 minutes apart and have continued a close relationship that allows everyone to be in each other's lives.
"There's no book for this," said Alexander.
"There's no person to give you advice. So we ended up just sort of huddling together, the four of us, and it's a blessing that we all are on the same page. We've spent every holiday together since then. We've spent every birthday together since then — and we've just kind of blended the families."
There's been a relatively happy ending to this seemingly no-win situation, but that doesn't change certain truths.
"I was overwhelmed by feelings of fear, betrayal, anger, and heartbreak," Daphna said during a news conference with her husband announcing the lawsuit.
"I was robbed of the ability to carry my own child. I never had the opportunity to grow and bond with her during pregnancy, to feel her kick."
"When the truth came to light, it made exchanging the children all the more heartbreaking," Alexander said in that press conference.
"Losing the birth child you know, for the genetic child that you don’t know yet. A truly impossible nightmare that inflicted trauma that will affect my family and me for the rest of our lives."
