Shocking mix-up! Woman unknowingly gives birth to someone else's child

A shocking error at a fertility clinic in Brisbane has led to a woman unknowingly giving birth to someone else’s child. The mix-up occurred at Monash IVF, one of Australia’s leading fertility providers, and has now sparked investigations and renewed scrutiny over the clinic’s procedures.

The mistake was discovered earlier this year when the biological parents of the child, whose embryos were stored at Monash, requested to transfer their remaining frozen embryos to a different clinic. It was during this process in February that staff realised something had gone wrong.

A spokesperson for Monash IVF later confirmed that an embryo belonging to one patient had been mistakenly thawed and implanted into another woman, resulting in a child being born to the wrong parents.


CEO Michael Knaap addressed the incident publicly. “On behalf of Monash IVF, I want to say how truly sorry I am for what has happened,” he said. He added that the entire team at the clinic was “devastated” by the situation.

The clinic has launched an internal investigation and assured patients that the incident appears to be isolated. Mr. Knaap said Monash immediately activated its crisis management team once the error was identified. Within a week, staff at the Brisbane clinic began meeting with affected patients to apologise and provide support.

The error has also been reported to multiple regulatory bodies, including the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee and the newly formed Queensland Assisted Reproductive Technology Regulator.


This isn’t the first controversy for Monash IVF. Just last year, the clinic paid out a landmark A$56 million (£26.8 million) settlement to more than 700 former patients. In that case, embryos had been destroyed after inaccurate genetic testing wrongly identified many of them as abnormal.

Roughly 35% of the embryos flagged by the faulty screening were actually viable and could have led to successful pregnancies.

In vitro fertilisation, or IVF, involves removing eggs from a woman’s ovaries, fertilising them with sperm in a lab, and then transferring the resulting embryos into the uterus. The process is costly with no guaranteed success. However, each embryo carries enormous hope for couples struggling with infertility.



According to a report from the University of New South Wales, over 20,000 babies were born via IVF in Australia and New Zealand in 2021 alone. But stories like these make us question how clinics like these are handling such sensitive procedures.