A couple in the US has taken legal action after a mix-up at a fertility clinic in California saw them with another family's baby.
According to the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Monday, two couples spent months raising children that weren't theirs before swapping the infants.
Daphna Cardinale said she and husband Alexander had immediate suspicions the girl she gave birth to in late 2019 wasn't theirs because of her darker complexion.
They suppressed their doubts because they fell in love with the baby and trusted the in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) process and their doctors, Ms Cardinale said.
Learning months later that she had been pregnant with another couple's baby, and that another woman had been carrying her child, caused enduring trauma, she said.
"I was overwhelmed by feelings of fear, betrayal, anger and heartbreak," Ms Cardinale said as she announced the lawsuit with her husband.
The Cardinales' complaint accuses the Los Angeles-based California Center for Reproductive Health (CCRH) and its owner, Eliran Mor, of medical malpractice, breach of contract, negligence and fraud.
It demands a jury trial and seeks unspecified damages.
Yvonne Telles, the office administrator for the centre, declined to comment on Monday, while Dr Mor could not be reached.
The two other parents involved in the alleged mix-up wish to remain anonymous and plan a similar lawsuit in the coming days, according to lawyer Adam Wolf, who represents all four parents.
The lawsuit claims CCRH mistakenly implanted the other couple's embryo into Ms Cardinale and transferred the embryo — made from Ms Cardinale's egg and her husband's sperm — into the other woman.
The babies, both girls, were born a week apart in September 2019.
The couples unwittingly raised the wrong child for nearly three months before DNA tests confirmed the embryos were swapped, according to the filing.
"All the while, Alexander and Daphna did not know the whereabouts of their own embryo, and thus were terrified that another woman had been pregnant with their child — and their child was out in the world somewhere without them."
Both babies were returned to their biological families in January 2020.
Mix-ups like this are rare, but not unprecedented.
In 2019, a couple from Glendale, California, sued a separate fertility clinic, claiming their embryo was mistakenly implanted in a New York woman, who gave birth to their son, as well as a second boy belonging to another couple.
Mr Wolf, whose firm specialises in fertility cases, called for greater oversight for IVF clinics.
"This case highlights an industry in desperate need of federal regulation," he said.
Breaking the news to their older daughter, now 7, that doctors made a mistake and that the new baby wasn't actually her sister "was the hardest thing in my life", Ms Cardinale said.
All four parents have since made an effort to stay in each other's lives and "forge a larger family", Ms Cardinale said.
"They were just as much in love with our biological daughter as we were with theirs," Mr Cardinale said.
AP/ABC
