Krystena Murray, 38, of Savannah went through a lot to have a child.
She gave herself daily injections in the stomach to stimulate her egg production. She picked out a sperm donor who looked like her, “with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes.” She endured egg retrieval, and then had an embryo implanted in her and got pregnant. She gave birth to a son in December 2023.
But Murray, who is White, was stunned to see her baby was dark-skinned and did not appear to be related to her. Still, she loved and bonded with the child even while being certain she had been implanted with the wrong embryo. A DNA test confirmed it. But when she notified the clinic, they contacted the couple who had actually created the embryo, who then sued Murray to get the child. Ultimately, she had to surrender the baby to them. She has not seen him since.
Now, she wants Mount Pleasant-based Coastal Fertility Specialists to pay for its mistakes and is suing in Georgia state court.
“The actions of the fertility clinic have come very close to destroying me, have left irreparable damage to my soul, and ultimately left me questioning whether I should be a mom or not,” Murray said.
She is asking for more than $75,000, plus treble damages, punitive damages, attorney fees and other relief. She alleges the clinic was not only negligent in giving her the wrong embryo, but the doctor committed civil battery by implanting in her an embryo she did not consent to get. She is represented by Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise, a national law firm that specializes in fertility clinic issues and has represented more than 1,000 families. This is the first time it has sued Coastal Fertility.
“Krystena is heartbroken,” said Adam Wolf, a partner in the firm. “Coastal fertility made a serious mistake, and the consequences are life altering for Krystena.” While saying it is fortunately not common, implanting the wrong embryo is the “cardinal sin” for fertility clinics, he said.
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The lawsuit alleges that Murray, who spent two years trying to conceive, relied on these and other assertions from the clinic as she was researching which one to use. She used the Savannah office for almost all of her visits, undergoing medical tests in what the lawsuit described as “an expensive and arduous process.” For weeks, she gave herself daily injections, sometimes several times a day, to stimulate her ovaries and boost egg production. After the eggs were retrieved and fertilized, one embryo was transferred in May 2023. Soon after, she learned she was pregnant and she delivered a healthy son on Dec. 29, 2023, according to the lawsuit.
“The birth of my child was supposed to be the happiest moment of my life, and honestly, it was,” Murray said. “But it was also the scariest moment of my life.”
The child was clearly Black and, while Murray insists the child’s race was not an issue for her, she also recognized that she was very likely not biologically related to the child.
“All of the love and joy I felt seeing him for the first time was immediately replaced by fear,” Murray said. If he was not biologically related to her, could someone then come and take him from her arms, she thought. This all ran through her mind in the first seconds she held him, even as she began to bond with him.
That bond deepened as she breast-fed the child over the next month. But Murray did not post photos or allow her friends and family to see him to avoid questions, draping a blanket over him at a family event to conceal him, according to the lawsuit.
Murray performed an at-home DNA test to confirm what she already suspected: she was not related to her child. She and the law firm reached out to Coastal Fertility to let them know about the apparent mix-up and also so they could let the couple that had actually created the child — referred to in the lawsuit as only the Stranger Couple — know what had happened.
Coastal Fertility apparently informed that couple in late March 2024 and that couple sued Murray to get custody of her son. Her family court attorneys convinced her she would lose the case. Rather than dragging it out, Murray chose to spare her child the ordeal and voluntarily gave him up in May 2024. She has not seen him since.
“I will never fully heal or completely move on, and part of me will always long for my son and wonder what kind of person he’s becoming,” Murray said.
She still does not know what happened to her embryos or what their status at Coastal Fertility might be, Wolf said. She doesn’t really want to go through IVF again, and would not have done it the first time had she known this could be the outcome. But Murray has not given up on becoming a mom, something she has always wanted, and is working with another clinic now
“I’m hoping to continue my journey to be a mom in the next year or two,” Murray said.
Full Story: The Post and Courier February 18 2025
