Couple who asked for female embryo sues fertility clinic over baby boy

A US couple are suing a fertility clinic after they requested a female embryo and instead got pregnant with a boy.

Heather Wilhelm-Routenberg said she would only have kids with her wife Robin “Robbie” Routenberg-Wilhelm if they could have girls – because Heather was still traumatised from being sexually assaulted on two different occasions after university.

Speaking to the New York Post, the couple said they sought out CNY, a fertility clinic in New York that could determine the sex of any embryo, created using an egg from Robbie and donor sperm, before it was transferred into Heather.

“I got pregnant on the first try and I was very excited. I felt like a badass, like I was doing something for my family,” Heather told The Post.

“We felt attached to this baby girl, and it was going to be a tiny Robbie, which was the best part.”

But when Heather was 15 weeks pregnant – having been assured by the clinic that the embryo was female, she said – they found out she was carrying a boy.

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Robbie Routenberg-Wilhelm (left) and wife Heather Wilhelm-Routenberg planned to have a daughter — until, they say, an upstate fertility clinic selected a male embryo that was transplanted to Heather’s body: “He was put there against my will, just like rape.” Picture: Scott Gable for NY Post

“At our 15-week appointment with our OB-GYN, the doctor went to check the results of the QNatal test [a diagnostic blood test to rule out chromosomal abnormalities which also discloses the baby’s sex]. She said, ‘Wait, do you know the sex of the baby?’” Heather recalled.

“‘We’re having a girl,’ I said. ‘It’s very important to me to have a girl.’

“She said, ‘That’s not what this says …’

“Our jaws dropped to the floor. I was convinced it had to be someone else’s result.

“I looked at Robbie and said, ‘What if it’s not yours – who is in my body?!’ That’s when I flipped out, that’s when I felt my body was taken hostage. I assumed it was someone else’s embryo, not the wrong embryo of ours.

“It scared the sh*t out of me. I don’t know how to explain this – it felt like there was an alien living inside of me.

“I said to Robbie, ‘If this is someone else’s kid, we will have to give it back.’

“Our OB offered us the option to abort. I respect others’ decisions, but that was never a choice I could make in these circumstances. I was hoping beyond hope someone would have our baby and we would switch after birth and it would be this happy story.

“We scheduled an ultrasound for the next day. That was the worst night of my life. I had this overwhelming sense of immobility. I remember lying in my bedroom, thinking, ‘This can’t be happening!’ Not only was the baby in my body not ours, but the baby in my body was male and he was put there against my will, just like rape.

“I started having flashbacks: I was waiting in the bed, which is what I was doing both times when I got assaulted.

“Robbie was afraid to leave me alone. We just had to wait till the next morning to find out if the baby was male. It was dumbfounding and traumatising.”

Explaining the couple’s desire to only have daughters, Heather said it was both “because of the assaults and because of the socialisation of boys – there’s constant socialisation of what it means to be a ‘real man’”.

“People say, ‘Oh, he’s a boy, let him hit you’, and all the camouflage and guns don’t help. It reinforces masculinity, and that’s a reminder of the assaults every time,” she said.

The couple are now suing CNY on 11 counts including breach of contract, medical malpractice and battery.

“After we found out I was carrying a boy, the internal investigation to determine whose embryo it was took seven weeks. I was convinced the whole time it wasn’t ours because the clinic knew not to transfer a male: It wasn’t a preference, it was a need.

“During that time, I had no connection to the baby inside – I figured I would be giving it away to its real parents. I tried not to think about being pregnant.

“Seven weeks later we got an email that this was our embryo. It was indeed male and it was indeed related to Robbie. No one else had our baby. There was no female baby coming. It brought up the loss of our first baby (Robbie had miscarried previously), like she died again.

“I was so furious. It felt like a deep betrayal. How the f**k do you mess up that bad? They messed up something so integral; the fact that there are no legal requirements about these procedures should strike fear in the hearts of all parents using fertility services.

“Meanwhile, our family and friends were all so happy. Nobody understood the complexity of my feelings. That was the most isolating thing – that we had a healthy baby, but I had no emotional connection and now I had to wrap my head around having a child forever that I wasn’t planning on.

‘The whole pregnancy, I couldn’t connect to the baby. I hate saying that. It’s painful. It was a terrible experience.”

When Heather suffered a placental abruption at about 27 weeks pregnant, she was put on bed rest – but was in such a dark place mentally that she “just wanted the baby out of me”.

After their son was born in December 2020, “I was trying to breastfeed him but it was really hard”.

“I had wanted skin-to-skin connection but I ended up wearing things so he wouldn’t touch my chest. When he did, it sent electric shockwaves through me,” Heather said.

“I started experiencing extreme anxiety. I would look at the baby and it would contort into the faces of all these grown men that I know. It was so creepy. Whenever that happened, I had to give the baby to Robbie.

“I literally thought I was going insane. There were several incidences of suicidal ideation, some of which were very dangerous. I had complex post-partum depression.

“I never want to come off ungrateful. If I was, he wouldn’t be here.”

After Heather found out she was expecting a boy, she said she became depressed and had suicidal ideations. Picture: Scott Gable for NY Post

Their son, now a year-and-a-half old, “is made of magic”, but Heather thinks about the fertility clinic’s “mistake all the time”.

The couple are now suing CNY on 11 counts including breach of contract, medical malpractice and battery.

“I feel immense guilt and shame because I wasn’t able to be emotionally present for him. I don’t want to play the victim,” Heather said.

“He’s an innocent being, he didn’t deserve any of this. The clinic messed with something so integral: our baby’s first formative years. That’s the reason I am doing this – because I love my kid so much. We think our son deserved that bond from the start.”

A lawyer for CNY said they are investigating and had no further comment.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission