Amy Fuggiti from Chicago dreamed of becoming a mother, but due to a chromosomal disorder, her desire was blocked by the prospect of having an unhealthy child and the threat of miscarriage. Amy, 36, has Axenfeld-Rieger Syndrome, which caused her to be diagnosed with glaucoma at the age of 12.
There is a 50 percent chance that Amy’s offspring will inherit this condition. But thanks to expensive PGT-M genetic testing and IVF, Amy has a chance to artificially create embryos in a laboratory, examine them for genetic defects, and then select healthy ones and implant them in Fuggiti herself. However, an additional complication for Amy was that in the past her body had already rejected healthy embryos.
After four years of IVF, Amy and her husband, Anthony, lost count of embryo retrievals – they either failed genetic testing or were rejected after the transfer. However, in July 2020, the so-called “golden embryo” appeared in the laboratory – healthy and ready for transfer. This time, the couple didn’t want to take the risk of having them implanted in Amy. Then she and her sister Courtney Essenpreis came up with an idea.
I didn’t even have to ask her to be our surrogate. We are so internally connected that it seemed like it just had to happen, – said Amy.
Amy and Courtney are not just sisters, but also identical mirror twins. This means that the girls are exact copies of each other, but in a mirror image: one is left-handed, the other is right-handed, one has a mole on the left, the other on the right, and so on.
Courtney herself became a mother twice, also resorting to IVF and a genetic test at the time due to the same health problems as Amy. But she had no problems with embryo implantation, so she was perfect for the role of a surrogate mother.
At the beginning of February 2021, the embryo transfer began. The sisters did not want to hope for success after all the disappointments, but they were lucky. Amy’s joy from a positive pregnancy test was strengthened by the fact that the baby will belong not only to her and Anthony, but also to her twin, with whom she is inseparable.
The sisters plan to tell the grown-up girl the story of her amazing origin. In addition, according to Courtney, all her own children are sure that newborns come from the laboratory.
She learns that her aunt has been her babysitter for nine months and has been a long time coming,” Amy said.
