Today they consider themselves “like sisters.” In an extensive article published this Monday, November 25, the New York Times Magazine tells the story of two little American girls, who are now five years old. In 2019, as BFMTV reported, each of them was born into “the wrong family.”
May and Zoë were born to two couples whose embryos were exchanged during in vitro fertilization (IVF) at a specialized clinic. Daphna and Annie, the mothers, each carried another couple’s child for nine months and raised them for a few months.
Exchanged embryos
When their little girl was born in September 2019, Daphna and Alexander Cardinale realized that May did not physically look like them. A DNA test confirms that “99.9%” are not the biological parents.
A long period of anxiety and doubt then begins. If they tried to find out and tell the clinic about the mistake, could they end up losing May? What had happened to their embryos? “Every time there was a knock on the door, Daphna feared it was a lawyer or a social worker with official documents coming to look for May,” says the New York Times Magazine.
Hiring a lawyer, they locate May’s biological parents. The clinic welcomed couples from all over the world, but surprisingly they only lived ten minutes away. Another surprise: Annie and her husband also have a daughter, Zoë, born a week apart in May.
Annie was also surprised by her daughter’s physical features: she was blonde with blue eyes even though she was of Latin American origin and her husband was of Asian origin. But her pediatrician reassured her that recessive genes always surprise parents.
A heartbreaking decision
The two couples meet and are reunited with their biological child in December 2019. After heartbreaking and disturbing questions, they decide to exchange the babies. A decision that will later be ratified in the courts. So they decide to do everything possible to make the change gradual and smooth. The announcement was particularly difficult for the two oldest children in each family, with May and Zoë being the second children.
For almost two weeks, the families visited each other every day, sometimes with Daphna and Alexander, sometimes with Annie and her husband. How long do you sleep? Do you use a pacifier? Mothers talk a lot about the habits of the two babies.
One chance in this unfortunate story: Families discover that they have roughly the same standard of living, a similar relationship to religion, or even a similar style of upbringing.
A “fusion ceremony”
In January, the girls each spend a full day with their biological parents. “For every happy emotion, there was a negative emotion. As much as I am so happy that Zoë is here and that we are finally home with her, I really miss my month of May,” Daphna tells the New York Times Magazine.
After one day, babies spend a night with their biological parents. After these testing phases, the families decide that it is time to make the final exchange.
Daphna and Annie had agreed that no matter what happened, they would do everything they could to help the older siblings come to terms with the situation. Like the day Daphna texted Annie because her oldest daughter was crying and telling her she missed May. Twenty minutes later, Annie and May were at her door, says the New York Times Magazine.
Shortly after, everyone made a new decision: raise the little girls almost together. The two couples even chose to symbolically form a large family, through a “fusion ceremony” organized by a priest.
“Change the shape of this love”
May and Zoë are now five years old and live like sisters, seeing each other very regularly and sharing important events in their lives. They call their four parents “mom” and “dad.” As Daphna confesses, although she still loves May, “she had to reshape that love for something new, for the greater good.”
For the first time this year, the two girls will be educated in different schools. To ensure that they saw each other at least once a week, their parents signed them up for the dance together.
According to one of the lawyers for one of the families interviewed in the New York Times Magazine, although embryo exchanges are rare, there are cases. However, families realize the mistake because they notice physical differences related to the origins of the biological parents. In cases where such signs are not seen, parents never suspect the mistake.
Source: BFM TV
