Chinese baby born 4 years after his parents' death, prolonged legal battle by grandparents

Newborn Baby
Newborn Baby - Representational Picture Reuters

There are several cases of medical miracle but here is a Chinese baby who was born to a surrogate mother, becoming one of the rare incidents in the history of the medical field, as his birth took place four years after his parents died in a car accident.

The biological parents of the child, or Tiantian, are Shen Jie and Liu Xi. They froze several embryos in a hope that they will have a child through in vitro fertilization (IVF) in 2013.

But the couple died in a car accident in Jiangsu, few days before the doctors decided to transfer one of the embryos to Liu. After the incident, the parents of the dead couple went through a prolonged legal process to obtain the fertilized eggs, which were stored in a hospital of Nanjing.

The Beijing News reported that when grandparents of the unborn baby won the case, the way to the birth of the child was cleared and he was born to a surrogate mother in December 2017. But the grandparents had to face several other issues even after the judge granted the embryos.

The fertilized embryos were allowed to be transferred from the Nanjing hospital only if another hospital agrees to store them. But as per China's rules, the country has banned the practice for over 16 years when Laws of the Management of Auxiliary Reproductive Technologies of Human Race took effect in 2001. So, the search for a medical institution to facilitate turned out to be a bigger challenge in the country.

Finally, the grandparents decided to enlist the services of a surrogacy agency in Laos, where it is legal but the airline authority refused to transport the small bottles of liquid nitrogen. So the embryos reached the destination via road.

Before the grandparents could feel relieved, they had to face a new issue related to the citizenship of the child. In that case, the surrogate mother flew to China from Laos and gave birth to a baby boy.

Last year, the four grandparents of the child took a DNA test to confirm that they are related to the newborn and the result was positive.

Last year, medical history was made in the US after 26-year-old Tina Gibson gave birth to a child from a donated embryo in Tennessee, which was frozen for 24-years and the most exciting part is the age difference between the mother and the newborn is chronologically one year. The embryo was frozen on October 14, 1992, and was used by Tina on November 25, 2017. She became a mother of a healthy baby girl, who weighed 6 pounds and 8 ounces and measured 20 inches height.

This article was first published on April 12, 2018
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