Australia’s second known case of an IVF embryo mix-up has been uncovered by two sisters who used Ancestry.com to learn about their heritage.
Sasha Szafranski found out a stranger living in the same town as her, Coffs Harbour on the NSW North Coast, was her aunt after completing a DNA kit by genealogy website Ancestry.com last year.
Sasha and her twin sister were born in the late 1990s after her mother Penny Szafranski and her then-husband underwent several rounds of IVF.
Having never been close with her father, Sasha hoped the DNA test could teach her more about his family’s Polish history. Instead, the results traced her ancestors back to Ireland and England.
The test also identified a complete stranger in her hometown as her maternal aunt.
Sasha and the woman began talking over text message and gradually realised both of their families’ had IVF treatments.
The mysterious woman’s sister and Sasha’s mother, Penny, were both IVF patients at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney in the 90s.
‘That was the moment when I realised it wasn’t an error with Ancestry,’ Sasha told the ABC.
Sasha and her twin sister (above) were implanted in the wrong mother as IVF embryos
Sasha Szafranski (above) learnt of the embryo mix-up when she did a DNA test with Ancestry.com
Penny Szafranski underwent IVF treatment in 1995 after her hope at having kids naturally dwindled. She gave birth to Sasha and her twin sister, only finding out 30 years later they were not biologically hers
Both the girls’ biological parents and the parents they grew up with were patients at the Royal North Shore Hospital (above)
Further investigation revealed that the woman’s sister was, in fact, Sasha and her twin sister’s biological mother.
It’s understood Royal North Shore Hospital mistakenly implanted the woman’s embryos in Penny Szafranski, instead of the correct one belonging to Penny and Sasha’s father.
More DNA tests revealed Sasha and her sister were not the biological children of their parents, but instead the daughters of two strangers.
‘I gave birth to them, you know. They were my girls. There was no thought that they weren’t,’ Penny said of her daughters.
‘The mistake that happened 30 years ago, it is just our life now. We just have to go on with it somehow and it’s awful. It shouldn’t have happened.’
Both families have hired lawyers and approached Royal North Shore Hospital to learn more about what happened.
So far, there have been very few answers.
Daily Mail has contacted the Northern Sydney Local Health District, which oversees Royal North Shore Hospital, for comment.