Image: Taisiia Shestopal for Unsplash
A woman from the United States is full of shock after doing a DNA test just for fun and finding out that the child she has been raising as her own for 12 years is not hers nor her husband's.
According to The Sun magazine, 47-year-old Donna Johnson did not intend to deal with such a shock as she was doing DNA tests for her son just as a joke.
"Reading the results of the DNA test online, I saw that there were mistakes. They said that my husband Vanner, who is now 47 years old, was the father of our oldest son, but the father of our youngest was unknown," Johnson told the magazine between sobs.
"I tried hard to understand. Then, in a moment of annoying clarity, I realized there must have been a mix-up at the clinic where we had IVF (a scientific procedure where a woman's egg is removed and fertilized in a laboratory). I met Vanner, who works in the finance program, in high school,” she added.
The couple got married in 2003 and had their first child, who is 18 years old, but encountered problems when trying to find a second child.
That's when they decided to seek IVF specialist services in 2007.
“In March 2007, we had our first IVF cycle using my eggs and his sperm. It failed, but that summer, we tried again and it worked.
When our son Tim was born in August 2008, it felt like a miracle. Like most siblings, the boys were different," the mother explained.
The child became not hers, after 12 years of upbringing knowing that it was his blood. "With the help of a counsellor, we worked it out and decided to tell Tim - then 12 - the truth, thinking it would be worse if he knew as an adult. He was very quiet and said he loves us too."
