A Mother’s DNA Test Revealed Her Children Weren’t Biologically Her Own

In 2006 Lydia was 26, an unemployed mother of two and pregnant with her third child. At that time, she’d applied to her home state of Washington for public assistance. The routine procedure in situations like this is simple. In order to receive government help, the claimant's children must be subjected to DNA testing.

After submitting her tests, Lydia received a phone call. Again, things seemed relatively normal. Surely the call from the Department of Social Services was routine? Even when the person on the other end of the line requested to see Lydia right away, nothing seemed untoward.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Straight from the off, it dawned on the single mom that she was being treated like some kind of criminal. At this stage, though, she had no idea why.

It soon became clear that the DNA tests Lydia’s children had completed had thrown up some unsettling results. When the tests came back, they showed that Townsend was definitely the kids’ father, but Lydia's connection was cloudy.

Because of the unusual results from the DNA tests, Lydia would now need to prove that her children were her own. And frankly, she couldn’t believe what she was being asked. “I knew that I carried them, and I knew that I delivered them,” she explained.

Just as any mother who has gone through the process of carrying and birthing their children, being told by officials that this was all made up sent Lydia into a head spin. Given her vivid memories of her pregnancies, she was convinced that there must have been some sort of mistake.

On top of everything else, the questionable DNA results meant that Lydia was unable to claim the support she'd needed in the first place. And even more worryingly, she was at risk of having her kids removed from her care.

Even in spite of how serious things were becoming and the stark words of the officials around her, there was no doubt in Lydia's mind that her children were her own. 

With her world crumbling, Lydia also informed her parents about the suspect DNA results. They too, were dumbfounded. In fact, they initially thought that their daughter was playing some kind of prank on them.

Revealing her shocked reaction, Carol told ABC News in August 2016, “I thought she was joking but then she started crying on the phone. I said, ‘Oh, it’s got to be a mistake.’”

Moreover, Lydia’s father, Rod, was as confused as his wife and daughter by the DNA results. “I almost went insane inside,” he told ABC News. “I couldn’t imagine why this could happen. My daughter is not a liar.”

One person who knew for sure that Lydia had given birth to all of her children was her obstetrician, Dr. Leonard Dreisbach. So when the desperate mom called him, he promised her that he would stand up for her in court.

Much to the dismay — and bemusement — of the Fairchild family, Dreisbach’s testimony was disregarded by the state. Even the doctor's adamance that Lydia had carried and birthed her two children was not enough. DNA was considered to be foolproof by the courts.

Still, there was a small chance that the results could have been mistaken due to human error. So, in order to eliminate this risk, new DNA samples were taken and sent to different labs than before.

Given the strict ruling of the courts and the fact the new results appeared to confirm that Lydia’s children weren’t hers, it now seemed that she would surely lose them. Following three hearings, Lydia received some grim advice from a judge.

Eventually, a lawyer named Alan Tindell agreed that he would represent her. But before he did so, he quizzed Lydia at great length about her connection to her kids. And his line of questioning spared no punches.

With his questions answered, Tindell began preparing Lydia’s case. Behind the legal proceedings, however, there was still a mother terrified that her precious babies would be taken from her at any moment.

Recalling this frightening time in her life, Lydia told ABC News, “Getting that summons in the mail to go to court, that they were trying to take my kids from me, my stomach just went into a big old knot. I just started crying, and I called my family, and I held my kids and was scared.”

“They would just look at me like, ‘What’s wrong, Mom.’ They’d come get me a hug, and I couldn’t explain it to them, because I didn’t understand,” she went on. For Lydia, then, it must have felt as though she was in an impossible position.

With that in mind, she had no idea how she would win the legal battle to keep her family together. But, as fate would have it, a breakthrough in the case was just around the corner.

Karen lived on the opposite side of the country, and yet, she’d experienced something that would doubtless sound familiar to Lydia and her family. Karen’s story began back in 1998 when she was in need of a new kidney.

In an interview with ABC News, Karen later recalled how the doctor had broken the shocking news. She even remembered the exact way they’d told her. Those aren't words you'd forget in a hurry.

Dr. Lynne Uhl is a doctor of transfusion medicine and a pathologist at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. this meant that she’d worked on the team in charge of Karen’s transplant. But despite her considerable experience, Uhl had never seen a case like that of Karen and her children.

Over in Boston, medical experts began putting Karen through exactly the same kind of harrowing questions that Lydia would later face in Washington. They asked where her children came from, given the fact they shared no DNA with her.

She added, “They had some other thoughts, like perhaps this was some kind of in vitro fertilization or even worse, that this woman just might not be completely telling the truth or even be psychologically unbalanced in some way.”

The medical team was on the cusp of discovering that Karen was being completely honest. It was at that time, when samples from Keegan’s blood, mouth, and hair still failed to tally with her sons’ DNA, that she told Uhl about a nodule she’d had removed in the past.

It was then that Karen’s doctors realized she had a rare syndrome known as chimerism. Greek mythology defines a “chimera” as a monster that is a terrifying mash-up of a snake, lion, and goat.

It's widely thought that chimerism is caused when two fertilized eggs join in the womb and transform into a single fetus. Put simply, it creates one person that contains the genetic blueprints of two separate people.

So you get two biological human beings in the form of one. Explaining Karen’s case, Uhl told ABC News, “In her blood, she was one person, but in other tissues, she had evidence of being a fusion of two individuals.”

Writing for Psychology Today, Sam Kean explained, Firm numbers remain elusive, but most— if not all —humans are probably a little chimeric, since mothers and fetuses commonly exchange cells during pregnancy." Still, Karen's situation was far more rare.

After it was discovered that Karen was her own twin, there was a chance that the same was also true for Lydia. However, she would still have to prove that she too was a chimera.

“They took DNA from the baby and myself right then and there, after birth,” she would later tell ABC News. “And it came back that there is no way possible that baby is mine.”

So, even in spite of the unforgiving means the courts had gone to, she was still no closer to having concrete proof of a biological link between herself and her children.

With their options swiftly dwindling, the attorney decided to explore that avenue. “I asked the judge to postpone the case until these tests could be done,” Tindell told ABC News.

"Shortly after conception, the female egg that was to become Karen became fused with another female egg. As a result, the fused egg contained two entirely separate DNA blueprints which were combined in Karen. This means that, biologically, Karen is more than one person."

There’s no denying that Lydia had come worryingly close to losing her kids. In fact, if it wasn’t for her attorney discovering Karen’s case, Lydia is all too aware of how things might have panned out.