Criteria
A surrogate mother, who already had given birth to two healthy children was faced with criteria that nobody before her has ever encountered.
She was carrying the baby for a Chinese couple when everything went pear-shaped.
Rare Ovulation
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Jessica Allen explained that the pregnancy started off unusually. She told Newsday on the BBC World Service she had ovulated despite being pregnant.
This is very rare for a pregnant mother. But it only got weirder.
Transferred Split
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Jessica said: “I was pregnant through IVF already and at about six, seven weeks they found another embryo and they labeled it that the one embryo that they transferred split and turned into twins.”
It seemed as though everything was normal, despite the miraculous split.
Superfetation
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Ovulating while being pregnant is so rare that from Jessica’s situation, people are just learning about it.
Its called superfetation and it’s not explained to surrogates, because doctors don’t see it as a possibility.
Delivery
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The doctors first thought that the second embryo was an identical twin and as a result of this, both babies were given to the mother soon after Jessica’s delivery.
She hadn’t seen the babies after giving birth to them.
Doubts
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When the babies were just a few weeks old, Jessica received photographs of them.
The intended mother also explained to Jessica that she was waiting for her to feel better before revealing her doubts about the origin of the one baby.
Legalities
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The intended mother took the baby boy for DNA tests. Jessica said: “That’s when she announced that the results indicated that I was his genetic mother.”
Jessica went on to explain that she and her husband definitely want their son, but legally they weren’t the parents.
Custody
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It took 10 months for Jessica to finally get custody of her own son and by that time she was a nervous wreck.
She said “I was just kissing him and trying to look at his face for the first time, I sat in the back seat with him so I could see him and talk to him.”