A 38-year-old woman has filed a lawsuit against the fertility clinic that helped her conceive, claiming the wrong embryo was implanted and leading to a devastating discovery at the baby’s birth.
The lawsuit, filed on February 18 in Georgia state court, alleges that Krystena Murray “unknowingly and unwillingly carried a child who was not biologically hers,” only learning the truth after giving birth to a baby boy.
Five months later, Murray was forced to give custody of the baby to his biological parents, deepening her trauma, according to the suit.
Murray, a wedding photographer from Savannah, had chosen to conceive using a sperm donor through Coastal Fertility Specialists, which operates clinics in South Carolina and Georgia. She selected a donor with similar physical traits to hers—white with dirty blond hair and blue eyes.
In 2023, Coastal Fertility transferred an embryo to Murray, but when she gave birth in December, she immediately noticed something was wrong—the baby boy was a “dark-skinned, African American baby,” the lawsuit states.
“The birth of my child was supposed to be the happiest moment of my life, and it was. But it was also terrifying,” Murray said at a news conference. “All the love I felt seeing him was immediately replaced by fear. How could this have happened?”
Despite the DNA test confirming the baby was not biologically hers, Murray bonded with and loved the child as her own. “I hoped it was just a sperm mix-up,” she told NBC News, but the DNA results revealed otherwise.
In February 2024, Murray’s lawyer notified the clinic. Coastal Fertility identified and contacted the baby’s biological parents, who confirmed through DNA testing that the baby was theirs. They then filed for custody.
On an emotionally devastating day, Murray handed over the child to his biological parents in court. “I walked in with a baby who loved me and was mine, and I walked out with an empty stroller,” she told NBC News. “I grew him, raised him, loved him—he was no different to me than if he were my own genetic child.”
Her attorney, Adam Wolf, expressed concern about the status of Murray’s embryos, stating the clinic has yet to confirm whether they were transferred to another couple or remain in storage.
“This is the cardinal sin for fertility clinics—transferring the wrong embryo should never happen,” Wolf said.
The lawsuit names Coastal Fertility Specialists and Dr. Jeffrey Gray, the director of the clinic’s embryology lab, as defendants. In a statement, Coastal Fertility Specialists acknowledged the error and expressed regret for the distress caused. They claimed the mistake was an isolated event and said additional safeguards had been implemented.
The suit accuses the clinic of negligence and other claims, seeking damages and a jury trial. “She was turned into an unwitting surrogate for another couple,” the complaint alleges.
Despite the heartbreak, Murray continues to consider the baby boy her son. “I spent my whole life wanting to be a mom. I loved, nurtured, and grew my child, and I would have done anything to keep him,” she said.
IVF mix-ups are extremely rare, but similar cases have occurred. In 2019, a New York couple sued a California clinic after giving birth to twins belonging to other couples. In 2021, two couples in California sued over a mix-up that led them to raise each other’s biological children before swapping custody. Both cases have since been settled.
