SYLVANIA, Ohio (AP) — Carolyn Savage didn’t know what to think, what to say, where to look as the
ultrasound wand glided over her belly. It was supposed to be her baby inside. Not someone else’s.
Yet here she was in her doctor’s office with the baby’s biological mother, both brought together by a
terrible error at a fertility clinic. A doctor, they said, had given Savage the wrong embryo, and now
she was carrying the other woman’s child.
“The wand is on my abdomen and the technician’s talking to someone else: ‘There’s your baby’s nose.
There’s your baby’s head,”’ she said. “It was surreal.”
Embryo mix-ups at fertility clinics are extremely rare. In those few instances, they’ve degenerated into
custody battles, ugly lawsuits and at least one abortion. But not this time. Savage and her husband
decided that the right thing — the only thing — to do was to give the baby to the biological parents.

“This was someone else’s child,” she told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “We didn’t know who it was.
We didn’t know if they didn’t have children or if this was their last chance for a child.”
“We knew if our child was out there, we’d go to the ends of the earth to get our child back,” she said.

Savage, 40, is due to give birth to a boy within the next two weeks via cesarean section. When it
happens, biological parents Paul and Shannon Morell, of the Detroit suburb of Troy, Mich., will be
nearby, waiting to meet their son.
The Savages say the fertility clinic transferred the wrong frozen embryo to Carolyn’s womb in early
February. Ten days later, Sean Savage got a call from a doctor saying his wife was pregnant with someone
else’s child.
“By God’s grace, there was never a moment where we thought we were going to have another baby of our
own,” Carolyn Savage said.
The doctor told them they could abort, but the couple didn’t consider it.
“It wasn’t even something we had to discuss,” said Sean Savage, 39.
The Savages won’t reveal the name of the fertility clinic, saying only that it’s not in Ohio. They have
hired attorneys who say they are working to make sure the clinic will accept full responsibility.
The Morells learned of the mistake a day after the Savages. They were just about to start the process of
trying for another baby with their last embryos when the clinic called.
The two couples knew nothing about each other. Shannon Morell feared that the pregnant woman would choose
abortion, ending their chance to give their 2-year-old twin girls a sibling.
“I didn’t think she’d want to carry the baby to term,” Shannon said. “I felt helpless.”
But the Savages were not only willing to continue with the pregnancy, but also to hand over the baby
without hesitation, unlike several other high-profile cases.
The Savages sent e-mail updates after every doctor’s visit. The couples finally met about three months
into the pregnancy. They shook hands, held back tears and began to form a bond.
Carolyn Savage won’t have another chance to carry her own baby because of her age and difficulties during
her earlier pregnancies. She and her husband plan to hire a surrogate and try again for a fourth child.

Carolyn Savage, 40, is seen at her home Wednesday in Sylvania. Savage says a fertility clinic implanted
the wrong embryo and that the baby she is about to give birth to isn’t hers. AP Photo/J.D. Pooley