Krystena Murray knew as soon as she gave birth in December 2023 that something had gone wrong. Opting to conceive with IVF, she had chosen a sperm donor who looked like her: White with dirty-blond hair and blue eyes.
But the baby she brought into the world was Black.
Still, Murray decided to keep the boy. She nursed him, took him to doctors' appointments and cuddled him. He quickly became her best friend and source of strength.
But the following March, her dream of raising the boy as her son was dashed. Upon learning of the mix-up, the boy's biological parents sued Murray for custody, eventually forcing her to give them the boy at a court hearing in May.
"She has not seen her child ever since," according to her lawyers.
Now, Murray, 38, is suing Coastal Fertility Specialists, accusing the fertility clinic of negligence that left her "emotionally broken." In a 41-page complaint filed Tuesday in Chatham County in Georgia, Murray alleges that the clinic and its lab director, Jeffrey Gray, mistakenly implanted a couple's embryo inside her instead of one of her eggs and a donor's sperm.
"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," she said at a news conference Tuesday, choking up.
Isabel Bryan, Coastal Fertility's executive director, said in a statement that the clinic "deeply regrets the distress caused by an unprecedented error that resulted in an embryo transfer mix-up."
"While this ultimately led to the birth of a healthy child, we recognize the profound impact this situation has had on the affected families, and we extend our sincerest apologies," Bryan said in the statement.
Gray did not immediately respond Tuesday to requests for comment.
Murray, who is single, said she chose Coastal Fertility because the South Carolina-based company had a satellite facility in Savannah, Georgia, where she lived. She said she hired the clinic in late 2022 or early 2023 to harvest her eggs and inseminate them with sperm from a donor she selected.
For weeks, Murray injected herself up to five times a day with hormonal drugs to stimulate her reproductive system into producing up to 20 eggs a month instead of the usual one per cycle, according to her lawsuit. The drug regimen was painful and caused stomach bloating and sharp mood swings. Meanwhile, she went to Coastal Fertility's Savannah facility for follow-up exams and blood tests.
Doctors retrieved several of Murray's eggs during surgery in February or March 2023, which the clinic then paired with the donor's sperm to create embryos, according to Murray. She believed one of those embryos was implanted into her uterus in May 2023 when she became pregnant.
Murray then endured the physical and emotional demands of pregnancy, including swelling, heartburn, exhaustion and two false labors that resulted in trips to the hospital, she alleges. All the while, she reminded herself that the sacrifices would be worth it as she prepared her baby's nursery.
On Dec. 29, 2023, Murray gave birth to "a beautiful, healthy baby," sparking joy instantly followed by dread.
"Upon seeing her baby, however, Ms. Murray knew something was very wrong," the suit says.
Although she and the sperm donor she had chosen were White, the baby was Black. Murray realized that there was no chance the child she had given birth to was her biological son, a feeling that "was terrifying and shocking," according to the suit.
Murray nevertheless tried to bond with her baby, her suit says. But as she did, she worried: If it wasn't her embryo, whose was it? Would someone storm into her hospital room, or later into her home, and take her baby?
Murray took the boy home. She stayed home to bond with her son, breastfeeding him, taking him to follow-up doctor's visits and snuggling him throughout the day, the lawsuit says. She followed the parenting playbook she had studied leading up to motherhood.
There was one exception, Murray says in her suit. She didn't post any photos of the baby online, nor did she let family or friends visit. She didn't want to answer the same questions she herself was asking, ones she couldn't answer: Whose baby was it, and how had this happened? When she attended a family funeral shortly after delivering, she draped a blanket over the boy's baby carrier.
In public, people made awkward and inappropriate comments, routinely asking if the boy was really hers, she alleges.
Motherhood was a life of extremes for Murray. She bonded with her son, who became her daily companion, someone she spent every moment with for his first five months of life. But terror and anxiety dogged her the entire time, the suit says.
In January 2024, Murray received the results of an at-home DNA kit she had purchased, she alleges in the suit. It confirmed what she already knew.
Murray said she wanted Coastal Fertility to know about its mistake, so it could fix whatever had gone wrong and stop it from happening to anyone else. On Feb. 5, her lawyer contacted the clinic, and by late March, the company had figured out which couple's embryo it had implanted in Murray, according to the suit.
On March 29, it broke "the devastating news" to a couple that, unbeknownst to them, their son had been born to another woman three months earlier.
The couple sued Murray for custody of the baby, forcing her to hire lawyers in multiple states. Another DNA test confirmed the results of the first, and Murray's lawyers concluded that she was going to lose the custody battle, her suit says. Not wanting to make the situation harder on the child, she gave up the baby on May 24 at a family court hearing.
Murray has been haunted ever since, she alleges. The trauma of losing the child has caused sleeplessness, nausea and other physical ailments. She recently moved, unable to stay in the house "filled with memories of her little boy" - him sleeping in his bedroom, smiling in the kitchen, looking in wonder at the tree in the front yard.
Murray's suit notes that she still doesn't know if Coastal Fertility transferred her embryo to someone else, and thus there's a possibility that "her biologically related child is being raised by anyone else."
She said she hopes her lawsuit stops IVF mix-ups like hers from happening to someone else.
Bryan, Coastal Fertility's executive director, said that the company did an in-depth review the day it learned of the mistake and has put in more safeguards to protect patients and "reinforce our already stringent protocols and reflect our commitment to patient safety, transparency, and trust."
For Murray, the damage is done.
"To carry a baby, fall in love with him, deliver him, and build the uniquely special bond between mother and baby, all to have him taken away," she said. "I'll never fully recover from this."
But Murray is still trying to have a child. She lightly chuckled and scoffed when asked if she wanted to go through IVF again. No, she said, but she is nevertheless going through the process with another clinic, because being a parent is something she's wanted to do since she was a child.
"I'm hoping to continue my journey," she said, "to be a mom."