When Jessica Allen decided to go for the surrogacy with the consent of her partner Wardell Jasper, her world turned upside down. They didn’t have the slightest clue that they would have to lose their biological child as well. What happened to Jessica is an extremely rare case of superfetation. Allen became pregnant while she was already pregnant. However strange it might sound, but it’s true. Here’s a brief explainer what superfetation is. It is an occurrence of second pregnancy while the woman is already pregnant. It gives rise to two embryos of different age in the uterus.
This condition is very rare. In humans, only 10 or so cases have been reported so far. Allen and Jasper signed for surrogacy as they were in need of money to save their house. So she became a surrogate mother. A Chinese couple was matched with Jessica to give birth to their baby. She conceived the baby in April 2016 through IVF.
Six weeks later, scans were conducted which revealed ground-rattling results. Her scans showed another baby already residing in her womb.
Allen was already a mother of two at the time. She was extremely surprised. She told New York Post, ““...Not once during the pregnancy did any of the medical staff provided by the agency say that the babies were in separate sacs. As far as we were concerned, the transferred embryo had split in two and the twins were identical.”
Last December, Jessica gave birth and according to her contract, she didn’t get to meet the babies after delivery. But she saw the pictures of the baby on a cellphone which made her realise that the twins didn’t look alike. In fact, one of them was lighter than the other.
“One was lighter than the other,” Allen told The Washington Post. “Their faces were not identical.”
"I did notice that one was much lighter than the other. You know, obviously, they were not identical twins," Allen revealed.
Nearly after a month of their birth, Allen got another picture of the twins from the mother who was concerned about their different appearances. A DNA test was carried out and one of the babies matched the Chinese couple while the other matched Allen and her partner. This meant that one of the babies were Jessica’s biological child.
The couple had a legal battle with the agency which arranged the surrogacy. It was demanding the couple a claiming fee for giving their baby to them. They named their baby Malachi after he turned 3-months-old.
"The [reunion] was incredibly emotional, and I started hugging and kissing my boy," Allen wrote in a column for New York Post. "[We] weren't planning to expand our family so soon, but we treasure Malachi with all our hearts."
