Last month, The Post broke the incredible tale of Jessica Allen, a surrogate mom who became pregnant with her own biological child while already carrying another couple’s baby. The story went viral, tugging at parents’ heartstrings around the globe. Here, Jane Ridley catches up with the Perris, Calif. parent about her reunion with her own baby boy.
With tears streaming down her face, Jessica Allen was finally reunited with her baby boy.
“It was the first time I saw my son [in person] — and it took place in a Starbucks parking lot,” Allen told The Post, which obtained exclusive pictures of the emotional “handover” at a Menifee, Calif. shopping center on Feb. 5, 2017.
Allen, 31, had been serving as a surrogate mom for the Lius,* a Chinese couple who had flown over to the US to have a baby.
She was pregnant with their embryo via in-vitro fertilization when she became pregnant with her and her husband’s own biological son, Malachi — but Allen’s doctors assumed she was just carrying the Lius’ identical twins.
The condition in which a woman gets pregnant while already carrying a fetus is known as superfetation, and it’s incredibly rare, with fewer than a dozen cases reported.
Allen claims she waited to have sex with her husband, Wardell Jasper, 34, until the initial pregnancy was confirmed, as per her doctor’s instructions.
The California mom only discovered that one of the babies was hers when the Lius contacted her a month after the birth in December.
“They are not the same, right?” wrote the intended mom, who had paid Allen $35,000 to be her surrogate. “Have you thought about why they are different?”
DNA tests proved that one baby was the Chinese couple’s biological child, and the other was Allen’s. Allen went through a complex legal battle with Omega Family Global, the San Diego-based agency which arranged the surrogacy, to get her child back.
According to Allen, the agency informed her that the Lius expected between $18,000 and $22,000 as compensation for the return of her child. She was also told that the Lius were considering putting the boy up for adoption by another family. Mercifully, Malachi was returned to his rightful parents after two months, without money changing hands.
“I missed two months of my son’s life,” says Allen, who picked Malachi up from an Omega case worker in Menifee. “Those first few weeks of bonding are so important and we were robbed of them.”
Together with Jasper, mom of three Allen is now fighting for possession of Malachi’s birth certificate because she is unable to secure him a social security card without it.
[Omega Family Global disputes Allen’s allegations but is precluded by nondisclosure agreements and federal patient privacy laws from going into specifics. In a statement to The Post, a company lawyer said it “takes great pride in the care, attention and support that is given to all surrogates.” See the full statement here.]
*Names have been changed