Accidentally giving birth to another couple's baby is a nightmare sounds like something out of a Hollywood drama. But for these couples, it's their reality.
The California Center for Reproductive Health mistakenly implanted Daphna and husband Alexander's embryos into Annie's uterus—and vice versa. Despite settling their lawsuit against the fertility clinic in 2022, their story continues to make headlines. (While the details of the settlement were not made public, the clinic told New York Times Magazine "the parties settled amicably.")
In fact, nearly five years after Daphna and Annie—who welcomed May and Zoë in September 2019, respectively—swapped their daughters at 4 months old, they shared an update on their unimaginably complicated dynamic.
"We blended the two families," Alexander revealed in the comment section of a New York Times Magazine Instagram post Nov. 26. "The girls are like sisters."
In a separate joint Instagram post, he and Daphna reflected on their journey.
"This is the story of our families coming together… choosing love over fear," they wrote. "It was difficult in the beginning but blending our families was really the only choice."
Although Daphna and Alexander—who also share 10-year-old daughter Olivia—could've kept the information to themselves, returning May and bringing home Zoë was the only option. (The girls are now 5.)
"We didn't want to be those people who were so desperate for a baby that we were going to deprive someone of theirs," she told New York Times Magazine. "It felt like a kidnapping."
Despite noticing stark contrasts in their daughters' features from their families, neither couple learned of the mixup until the babies were 3 months old. As May began to look more like her biological parents, Daphna and Alexander decided to take a DNA test that ultimately proved they were not her parents.
"I looked at her, and I was so aware that I just don't know her," Daphna tearfully explained in a now-private 2021 YouTube video released by their attorney Adam Wolf, per Today.com. "I didn't know her at all. I remember thinking I was like, 'I don't know you,' which is a heartbreaking thing to think of your own daughter."
The grief they felt was two-fold: They were losing the baby, which she had carried for nine months and raised for four, and they had missed the first few months with baby Zoë.
"We missed the whole newborn phase," she said. "We missed the whole pregnancy. I was losing a baby at the same time that I was getting a baby. It's truly an impossible nightmare. So there's grief, and so then your heart starts breaking for their family at the same time. Because at the same time, everyone's gaining a child but everyone's losing a child."
And it wasn't easy for Annie and her husband, either. With little precedent regarding this situation, the four parents felt it was best to maintain a close bond.
"There's no book for this," Alexander told People in 2021. "There's no person to give you advice. So we ended up huddling together, the four of us, and it's a blessing that we all are on the same page."
And Daphna couldn't agree more. "It was this moment of sheer bliss when everybody is getting to know each other and falling in love with each other," she added. "She just really folded into our lives and into our hearts."