(DC Pundit) – In a twist of fate that could make even the most seasoned soap opera writer’s head spin, a Los Angeles couple’s journey through In vitro fertilization (IVF) took a turn that left them reeling.
Daphna and Alexander Cardinale thought they had hit the jackpot when they brought their newborn baby girl home in September 2019. Little did they know, they were about to embark on a rollercoaster ride that would turn their world upside down.
“It was one of the happiest moments of our lives,” Alexander Cardinale told People magazine, his voice tinged with bittersweet nostalgia.
As the months ticked by, however, the couple couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something was amiss. Their daughter, May, bore no resemblance to either of them. It was like looking at a stranger’s child in their own home.
After hemming and hawing, they decided to take an at-home DNA test. “And that’s when our world started falling apart,” Alexander said, the weight of those words hanging heavy in the air.
The results were a bombshell: there was a 99.9 percent chance that neither Daphna nor Alexander was May’s biological parent.
Determined to get to the bottom of this mess, the Cardinales lawyered up. Their hunch? Another couple might be in the same boat, unknowingly raising the Cardinales’ biological child.
Lo and behold, they were right on the money. In December 2019, they discovered that another couple, who’ve chosen to remain anonymous, had indeed received the Cardinale embryo.
"This is unfathomable," says Adam Wolf, attorney for Daphna and Alexander Cardinale, a CA couple who filed a lawsuit which says a LA-based fertility clinic implanted the wrong embryos into two women during in vitro fertilization procedures, resulting in a life-changing mix-up. pic.twitter.com/ng39CIHIvJ
— CNN This Morning with Kasie Hunt (@CNNThisMorning) November 10, 2021
The two couples met, confirmed the DNA results, and found themselves in a pickle. How do you swap babies you’ve already bonded with?
Alexander described the gut-wrenching moment he first held his biological daughter: “The moment my hands went under my daughter’s arms and we locked eyes, something powerful and unexpected washed over me. I knew this child. At the same time, Daphna and I were so devastated and sad … about losing our birth daughter.”
In a stroke of out-of-the-box thinking, Daphna suggested a rather unconventional solution: “What if we don’t ‘let go’? What if we just have 2 babies? We share them. We have to find a way to have both babies. Spend a lot of time together. Raise these girls together.”
Surprisingly, the other couple was game. For the past five years, they’ve been living up to this arrangement, meeting frequently and even sending the girls to the same preschool.
“There’s no book for this,” Alexander told People. “There’s no person to give you advice. So we ended up just sort of huddling together, the four of us, and it’s a blessing that we all are on the same page. We’ve spent every holiday together since then. We’ve spent every birthday together since then — and we’ve just kind of blended the families.”
Now, the Cardinales are taking legal action against their physician, Dr. Eliran Mor, his lab, and the California Center for Reproductive Health. It’s a cautionary tale that serves as a stark reminder of the potential pitfalls in the world of assisted reproduction.
In the end, this story is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of love to overcome even the most bizarre of circumstances.
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