With so many contracts and so much red tape to get through, surrogacy is supposed to a straight-forward process for all parties involved – but this was certainly not the case for Jessica Allen.
The California native has shared her story, after a chance incident resulted in her fighting to get her biological child back from the couple she had acted as surrogate for.
Jessica, 31, opened up about her experience in a piece entitled 'I rented out my womb – and they almost took my own son', in The New York Post.
In the piece, Jessica explained how she agreed to carry a baby for a Chinese couple whom she refers to as the Liu family. They acted through a surrogacy agency, and a single embryo was successfully transferred into her uterus.
During a routine check-up, Jessica was told that she was expecting not one, but two babies. Presuming that the Lius’ embryo had split in two, Jessica informed the expectant couple that they were going to be welcoming twins.
Nine months later, Jessica gave birth to two sons: Mike and Max.
The Liu family were delighted with their new arrivals, but questions began to arise at around the one-month mark.
The Lius sent Jessica a photo of the twins, and they raised concern over the fact that one of the boys looked Asian, while the other was clearly of African-American descent.
As Jessica’s husband, Wardell, is African-American, they chose to conduct DNA tests on the boys. The results were shocking: Mike was the biological son of the Lius, while Max was the biological son of Jessica and Wardell.
“It turned out that, in an extremely rare medical incident called superfetation, we had gotten pregnant naturally – despite using condoms – after the IVF cycle during which the embryo was transferred into my uterus,” Jessica explained.
Once the Lius found out that Max wasn’t their son, they began approaching adoption agencies with a view to giving him over to a new family. They also sought up to $28,000 worth of compensation from Jessica, personally, for the emotional distress of the mix-up.
Of course, it was extremely distressing for Jessica and Wardell, too, who wanted nothing more than their son back.
Jessica and Wardell did get their son, now named Malachi, back; but the process was far from easy or straightforward.
“We told the agency in no uncertain terms, ‘We want our son’, but we would still be responsible for the bill if we kept him,” she explained.
“It was like Max was a commodity, and we were paying to adopt our own flesh and blood.
“A caseworker from the [surrogacy] agency also said we owed her a further $7,000 for expenses she had incurred for the bureaucracy and for looking after our son.”
Thankfully, after two months, Jessica and Wardell got their son back. They ended up having to hire a lawyer, who managed to get the agency to drop the fee and compensate the Lius out of their own funds.
Jessica and Wardell know that the situation could have turned out so much differently, and they now ‘treasure Malachi with all their hearts’.
“I don’t regret becoming a surrogate mum, because that would mean regretting my son,” she added.
“I just hope other women considering surrogacy can learn from my story. And that a greater good will come out of this nightmare.”
