One thing that is surely complicated is biology. Otherwise, how can a surrogate mom become pregnant with her own child while carrying a couple’s baby? While this news is confusing for us, it’s a serious experience for the surrogate mom.
After welcoming two healthy boys into her life, 31-year-old Jessica Allen decided to offer her services as a surrogate.
Alongside this immediate benefit, Allen saw this move as an opportunity to give a family a chance to bring children of their own into this world.
And so, Allen signed up with a San Diego-based firm called Omega Family Global and was matched with a Chinese couple in 2016.
In her words, “I was a bit scared, but I heard the Lius were thrilled to be having twins.”
And since Allen didn’t get the chance to see either baby after she gave birth to both of them via Cesarean section, she saw no reason to believe she wasn’t having twins.
As she put it, “I did notice that one was much lighter than the other. You know, obviously, they were not identical twins.”
To solve the mystery, this woman had the children take a DNA test.
But Allen’s case was even rarer than that might suggest as this happened as a result of an incredibly uncommon phenomenon known as superfetation.
This is a term given for when a woman is pregnant with two babies who aren’t twins at the same time and according to their chief medical contributor — Dr. Jennifer Ashton — there still isn’t a solid hormonal or physiological explanation for why it happens.
A reproductive medicine specialist named Karen Boyle also said that there were only 10 previously reported cases of superfetation ever occurring.
But while Allen’s case is a marvel to those hearing about it, it soon turned into a nightmare for her.
As she said, “I was heartbroken knowing I carried a baby I didn’t know was mine and that he was taken from me without my knowledge and was in the arms of other people where he did not belong.”
Although the couple would end up giving the baby up to Omega Family Global, they wanted $22,000 in compensation and the agency wanted an additional $7,000 for expenses.
By February 5, Allen would be reunited with her baby in a Starbucks parking lot and she and Jasper would eventually name him Malachi.
As she told the BBC, “When she [the case worker] pulled him out of her car and walked towards me, I just snatched him from her and said ‘give me my baby’ and 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 and stuff.”
