- 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 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.
“This has destroyed me,” Murray, who is suing Coastal Fertility Specialists in Savannah, Georgia, said in a press release. “Nothing can express the shock and violation upon learning that your doctor put a stranger’s embryo into your body.”
She described herself as “heartsick” and “emotionally 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
When Murray delivered the little boy, she felt conflicted. She had carried him to term and taken him through labor. As she cuddled him and breast-fed him, she felt a deep sense of bonding. On the other, she had questions about their unexplained racial difference and didn’t know what to do.
She didn’t post photos on social media or let her loved ones meet her child because she knew they’d have questions, too, Murray said through her lawyers. Every time the doorbell rang, she worried it was someone coming to take her child away, they 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 clinic mixed up embryos
In early 2023, Murray began taking prescribed medication to stimulate egg production. Throughout the process, she went to Coastal Fertility Specialists’ Savannah location nearly every day for bloodwork and follow-up appointments.
The clinic successfully retrieved several of Murray’s eggs to create embryos with the sperm of her donor — a white man who, like her, had blue eyes and dirty blonde hair.
On May 2023, Coastal Fertility Specialists transferred an embryo into Murray’s uterus. She later learned that it belonged to another couple registered at the clinic.
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.
In a press release, Adam Wolf, partner at Peiffer Wolf and representing Murray in her lawsuit against Coastal Fertility Specialists, said the clinic made a “very serious error.”
“The consequences are life-altering,” he said. “This should never happen in a fertility clinic.”
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.”
Business Insider has contacted Coastal Fertility Specialists for comment.
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