An extremely rare case of superfetation in a surrogate mother leading to legal custody issues

Jessica Allen with her family, Malachi is on the left side of screen. 

A California woman got pregnant when she was already pregnant under a surrogacy contract that resulted in ‘Twin Pregnancy’ with two different set of parents.

Jessica Allen, 31- year old agreed to be a surrogate for a Chinese couple, through a surrogacy agency in Southern California.  Surrogacy is legal in some states in US, including California, but it is illegal in China. 

In April 2016, Jessica underwent a single embryo transfer with the Chinese couple’s embryo after a successful IVF.

At six weeks of pregnancy, she was told that she is carrying twins. She was a bit scared, but the Chinese couple was thrilled. She and her partner thought that the embryo must have split into two after implantation. Her $30,000 payment, including expenses —was increased by $5,000 for the second child.

She denies that throughout her prenatal period, none of the staff and physician at the hospital told her that the babies were in separate sacs.

In December 2016, she gave births to both babies by C-section at a hospital in Riverside, California. As per her legal contract with the surrogate agency, she was not allowed to see the babies. She did briefly see a cell-phone picture and did notice that they looked different.

On January 2017, she received a message from the Chinese couple that the twins look different, along with a picture.

“They are not the same, right?” the message read, according to the New York Post. “Have you thought about why they are different?”

A DNA test soon followed and revealed that one of the twin was indeed Allen and Jasper’s biological son. Despite using condoms, she has become pregnant with her own son, after being already pregnant with the Chinese couple baby.

Courtesy: Victoria Roberts

What followed was a lengthy, expensive legal battle, but she finally won the case and got her son back in February 2017. She and Jasper renamed their newest family member Malachi, and he is now 10 months old.

Superfetation is common among mammals, but in order for superfetation to occur in humans, three seemingly impossible things need to happen at the same time: ovulation must take place during an ongoing pregnancy, sperms must somehow penetrate the blocked cervical canal with thick mucus plug and travel all the way into the fallopian tube and finally, the embryo should  successfully implant itself in an already-occupied uterus. The odds of all three of them happening together are very rare, making it an extremely rare occurrence.

A 2008 paper in the European Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, mention that this phenomenon is so rare that only 10 documented cases are mentioned in literature so far.

A review of literature showed that superfetation is mentioned in some case of ARTs.

In the meantime, this case should be a "reason for pause and thoughtfulness" among physicians and surrogacy organization to check for superfetation in unexpected twins in a surrogate mother said Dr. Saima Aftab, medical director of the Fetal Care Center at Nicklaus Children's Hospital, who was not involved in Allen's case.