"I rented out my uterus, and they almost took my baby"

A surrogate mother from the USA became pregnant at the moment when she was already carrying a child. According to experts, superfetation is an extremely rare phenomenon among people.

California resident Jessica Allen gave birth to twins from different people at the same time. An American woman was carrying a child of a infertile couple from China and soon realized that she was also pregnant with her own husband. There are no more than a dozen similar cases in the history of medicine. However, the woman had to fight for parental rights: a real war unfolded for the baby.

Source: NY Post

California resident Jessica Allen, a mother of two children, agreed to become a surrogate mother for a infertile couple from China. The fee of 35 thousand dollars for carrying someone else's child, Jessica and her husband Jasper Wardall decided to spend on a pledge for their own house. In recent years, surrogacy has increasingly become a way of earning money for low-income Americans.

Six weeks after a successful IVF procedure, during an ultrasound, doctors discovered that a California resident was pregnant with twins. At first, doctors assumed that the American woman would have twins. But during childbirth, which took place by Caesarean section, doctors noticed that one newborn was noticeably smaller in size than the other.

According to the contract signed with the Chinese couple, Jessica had the right to spend an hour with the newborns, however, the babies were taken away immediately after giving birth. The next day, the customers showed the American a photo of babies on a mobile phone. Then the woman noticed how much they differed from each other. It was obvious that one kid was Chinese, and the other was a mulatto.

After the DNA examination, it turned out that the kids have different parents. One child really had the genes of the Chinese, but the second was the native son of an American woman. It turned out that the woman was able to get pregnant from her partner while already in the position. And this is despite the fact that during pregnancy she and her husband used condoms: according to the terms of the contract, the surrogate mother could not have unprotected sex while carrying a child.

As the scientists explained, we are talking about superfetation — fertilization of an egg during pregnancy. According to experts, the phenomenon is usually found in the animal world — in rodents, rabbits, horses, sheep and kangaroos. As for people, science knows only about a dozen such cases.

Note that because of this mystery of nature, Jessica almost lost her own child. It took a long time for the woman to issue parental rights to her newborn son. According to the surrogacy agreement, the baby belonged to a Chinese couple, just like the other child. Through the surrogacy agency, Jessica found out that the customers refused the little mulatto, who was named Max, and, moreover, demanded compensation in the amount of 18 to 22 thousand dollars.

Of course, Jessica and Jasper didn't have that kind of money, because they spent all the money from surrogacy on the house. Then the agency decided to repay this debt by looking for foster parents for little Max who were willing to pay for him. And a real judicial war began for the baby.

Jessica and her husband spent about $3,000 on lawyers. Fortunately, the baby still got into his own family, which, after numerous court hearings, no longer had to pay anything to the Chinese couple. The agency incurred the costs of paying compensation to customers by taking money from the internal fund.

As a result, it took Jessica about three months to get parental rights to her own child. Now the baby, who was named Malachi by his biological parents, lives with his siblings, mom and dad.