Hey, it's Michael.
A little bit of news from us.
From here on out, Natalie Rachel and I are going to be hosting new episodes of The Daily on Sundays.
It's a chance to tell all kinds of stories that we have a harder time covering during the week.
And we're genuinely really excited about this, and we hope that you are too.
You can listen to the first of these this Sunday.
So tune in.
And now, here's today's show.
From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.
This is The Daily.
For millions of families, IVF is a modern medical miracle.
But for a small number of parents, the largely unregulated field can go terribly wrong.
Today, Sue Dominus brings us the remarkable story of how two families navigated an unthinkable IVF mistake that will connect them for the rest of their lives.
It's Friday, January 16th.
Sue, welcome back.
Thank you so much.
So you're fast becoming the family correspondent here on The Daily.
You have come on the show to talk about motherhood menopause siblings, how siblings shape one another's destiny.
I'm curious how you first discovered the story that we're going to be talking about in today's edition of Pseudominous Family Correspondent.
Yeah, I mean, for whatever reason I am someone, maybe because I was the youngest of three and always was kind of the observer.
I've always had this interest in how families work.
So both from my own childhood, but also as the mother of fraternal twins myself.
But there was one fundamental way that American families have changed over the past few decades that I hadn't really explored.
And that's how some families now can start families.
And tell me what you mean.
Well, I'm talking about something that we kind of take for granted but is really quite revolutionary in the history of humanity, which is IVF or in vitro fertilization.
Everybody seems to know somebody who was either conceived that way or has turned to it.
But it really is for many people, I think, one of the great, miraculous and meaningful scientific advancements of the 20th century.
Right.
It allows women to put off having kids until later in life.
It allows women not to worry so much about the aging of their eggs.
It allows people who have infertility for one reason or another to conceive.
And I might add that I include my own family in this history.
Your children are IVF babies.
Yes, they are well aware, and I don't think they'd mind my sharing that.
But maybe because it was my experience and because I know the industry to be kind of shockingly under-regulated, I have always been curious about what exactly is happening behind the scenes and what kind of possibility is there for error.
And when that does happen, what can the consequences really turn out to be for people?
Mm-hmm.
So I started looking into stories about IVF that had unusual twists and turns.
And I have to say, you don't have to look too hard to find some of those stories.
But the one that moved me the most is a story about a couple who went through something really unimaginable.
It was a story that really expanded my idea of what a loving family could be, how people can approach the very idea of family with grace and generosity and so much faith in humanity.
And it really, I have to say, was quite affirming for my faith in humanity.
So tell us about this couple and this saga.
My name is Alexander Cardinale.
I'm Daphna Cardinale.
So their names are Daphna and Alexander Cardinale.
He also goes by Xander.
They are in their 40s and they live in California.
And Daphna is a therapist.
And Xander is a musician and songwriter who is also studying to become a therapist.
I think I've always known that I wanted to be a parent.
And for them, being parents was always in the plan.
When we were talking about it, I think we always sort of visualized two.
And I always sort of felt the energy of two kids.
They had a child named Olivia, but as they were kind of rounding their 40s, they had waited a few years and now they decided they wanted to have a second child.
And we were trying for what seemed like forever.
So after trying and failing to conceive, they decided to meet with some doctors.
For whatever reason, because of our ages and whatnot, IVF was suggested pretty much up front, right?
And IVF works for them.
Daphna gets pregnant.
They are thrilled to learn that they will be having another baby girl.
And they start to get to know her even before she's born.
You know, I'm one of those people who, like, I talk to the baby.
I'm like, we're going to go do this now.
We're doing that now.
And while Daphne is pregnant, she talked to the baby in her womb and Xander would sing for her.
What were you singing, Xander?
What did you sing to her?
I think I sang Made For You a lot.
Made For You was the one that was... Oh, darling, I was made for you.
And I would kind of sing that to her in her belly.
And then I would speak to her so she would know my voice.
And then finally in the fall, Daphna gives birth to a beautiful baby girl.
We just were smitten and instantly in love and the family felt complete and this little person's energy and her little spirit and everything about her just kind of filled out our family.
And they asked me to keep the name they gave her private.
So for the rest of the story, we'll be using her nickname, May or May May.
She was perfect.
She was huge.
They were telling me, they're like, she's almost 10 pounds.
She was huge.
And they're like, oh, she's got a lot of hair.
And I was like, so did I. I'm like, that's my baby.
And when they get her home the family really feels complete.
But Olivia was really falling in love with her so deeply that we had a lot of special time where Olivia would put on shows for her and draw her pictures and sing her songs and it was really sweet.
What's it like to feed her?
Good.
I can feel her sucking a little bit.
She sucks the bottles hard.
She does, yeah.
Olivia is bonding instantly with her sister.
She's madly in love.
Can you say Olivia?
Olivia.
I think she did.
You said your name.
They're all just super blissed out and in love.
And for Daphna, the long struggle to conceive a second child is finally over.
And here I sense a twist.
And this story is coming.
Yeah.
Sadly, that is true.
As the baby starts growing and looking more like herself, Xander and Daphna start noticing a few things.
Daphne is a natural redhead.
She has fair skin.
Xander has blue-gray eyes.
He's also quite fair.
Their first daughter, Olivia, is just blonde, blonde-blonde.
And Maymay had this really dark, straight, black hair.
I was really searching in her for, like, who does she look like?
She didn't look like Olivia, but she did look exactly like the birth pictures of my wife.
And we were like, oh, wow, that's so cool.
Like, it's just, you know, she must take after you.
Like you know.
So we just kind of Nate did look a lot like Daphna did in her own super early baby pictures.
And sometimes they just thought, yeah, genetics are weird.
She must look like somebody in our background whom we don't know or we're just not thinking of.
I just held tight to an idea that she must really be taking after a side of Daphne's family which was more Sephardic looking and more
But at this early stage of their family, the issue does start eating away at Xander.
It's really on his mind that this daughter looks so unlike either of them.
And he's really not sure what to do with that.
I was arguing internally with myself and trying to convince myself that everything was fine constantly.
And then when that would sort of boil over to a boiling point, to where it was bubbling out and bubbling over, I think that's when the comments would come out of me to her, because deep down I wanted reassurance, or I wanted camaraderie, or I wanted just someone to be witnessing or seeing it with.
And I wanted her to see what I was seeing.
And so I would make a joke like, you know, maybe the IVF, Clinic made a mistake or, you know, it sounded ludicrous even saying it out loud at the time.
And so I would say it to kind of throw it out there like a comic testing a bad joke at a nightclub.
I would throw it out there to see what the reaction would be.
It didn't land.
It wasn't landing well.
No.
No.
But as time goes on, this does start to bother Daphna.
And it's also bothering her that Xander just does not seem like himself.
He's very distracted.
And she can see that her daughter looks really different from both of them.
If anything, she would say that she looked possibly like her ancestry would be Asian and neither of them has any asian background.
So she starts to wonder.
Hearing those comments are what made me look at her and look for resemblance.
But i think maybe subconsciously i was also sort of picking up on it, because there was that dissonance when i looked at myself and whenever she was next to olivia something didn't really sit right and i couldn't put my finger on it.
But So at a certain point, when Maymay is about three months old Daphna, who's pretty worried about Xander, ends up talking to his best friend, Morgan about everything that's been going on.
And so Morgan's like, yeah, no, he's really worried about it.
He's, you know, stressing about it.
And so I asked Morgan a direct question.
I said, all right, you know, in your opinion, what do you think?
Do you think that he's not her dad?
He said, well, I think there's a good chance that one of you guys at least isn't her parent.
He's pretty certain that at least one of them is not the parent.
And I said, what are you talking about?
What percent?
He's like, I think I'm like 90% that one of you isn't her parent.
And I was floored.
I was just completely shocked.
So, after all of Xander's doubts and this real reluctance from Dafna to see Mei Mei as anything other than her daughter, it ends up taking an outsider, someone from beyond the family, to say this almost unsayable thing out loud.
This is... potentially not your baby.
Yeah.
You know, when you think about it from Daphna's point of view, especially this baby grew in her, is part of her.
You know, it came from her cells.
And now that she's been in the world for three months, both of them have bathed her.
They have fallen asleep next to her.
They know her smell intimately.
Mm-hmm.
They love her deeply.
But I think once it's been said out loud, you really can't unhear it at that point.
It's, you know, you have to really grapple with it and take it seriously.
And what does that look like for Xander and Daphna?
So how soon after that call with Morgan did you guys decide, okay, let's do this.
We need to take a test.
I think that night.
They have one of these genetic tests that you can buy from Amazon and you send it back to the company and they tell you the results and they decide to pull the trigger and use it.
So a week passes, they have no response and the company says they need to do it again.
Then I got a phone call saying something's weird with these tests.
It was inconclusive and I was talking to this woman on the phone.
And she said, are you the mother?
And I said, that's what we're trying to figure out.
We did IVF.
We're trying to see, are either one of us this child's parents?
And Daphna is trying to explain, as best she can, this very unusual situation where they went through IVF and still don't know if the child is theirs.
And she said, got it.
Okay, we'll rerun the test.
We'll give you a call on Monday.
This is Friday.
And I was like...
I'm sorry, that's not, no.
Please, you have to understand what you're actually saying out loud to me.
And she said, yes, okay, I'm sorry.
I will give you a call in an hour.
And they finally get the result in the form of an email.
Xander opens it up and reads it.
So I open it up.
It's a jumble of words and numbers at first.
There's two PDFs.
I lock in on one for the father, one for the mother.
So I open up the father one and I'm going through the numbers and I'm going through the letters and the words and I'm trying to make sense of it.
And then at the bottom, there it is.
99.9% positive that the subject is not the father.
And your reaction was really quick.
It was just like, what about me?
What about me?
Yeah, because I'm in full panic mode.
I'm like pacing with the baby.
You're holding her and you're like, okay, well, what about me?
Click on the other attachment for the mother.
Then he has a big long sigh without any words.
And it said 99.9% chance you're not the mother.
Neither one of them is the genetic parent of Maymay.
She's not the biological mom.
He's not the biological dad.
And this beautiful baby, who has made their lives so whole and feels so complete and has brought them so much joy, is really, in a sense, a genetic stranger.
We'll be right back.
Sue, after Daphna and Xander learn this pretty, world-shattering information that Mae is not their genetic baby.
What do they do with that information?
Yeah, I mean, they are devastated.
There's just this horrible sense of potential rupture in this beautiful fabric of their lives.
I mean, there was part of us that just wanted to run away from all of it.
You know, like, what if we just fled to Mexico?
The first reaction is denial and a desperate wish to make the problem go away however they can.
You know, maybe they could do nothing and pretend they never found out.
Well, if we do nothing, then we just keep the status quo and we just move on with our lives.
And I said, well, let's walk through that for a second.
But they eventually did have to start really talking through what those various scenarios would mean, not just for them but for Olivia and of course, for Maymay.
Right.
What happens to her when she grows up?
What are the questions she's going to have when she's older?
What do we say to her?
And every time, it would always end with, what is the right thing for her?
And...
The right thing for her was never just to keep quiet and just pretend like it didn't happen.
Because what was right for May was absolutely, this is what we should do for you.
Of course we should do this for you.
And as they're playing at all the scenarios, this other looming horror comes to them, which is the question of if this is not their genetic baby.
Where is their genetic baby?
What happened?
Is that embryo lost in a pile somewhere at the lab?
Is their genetic child being raised by another couple?
What if this couple is someone they would never have wished their child to be raised by?
This IVF lab sees people from all over the world.
Would they ever even be able to find that child?
Right.
Inconceivable thought is now being stacked on inconceivable thought.
Yeah, almost too much to take in at one time, I think.
And how do they go about finding her parents?
Well, they eventually hire lawyers who start talking to the fertility clinic they relied on.
And very quickly, they get somewhere.
So we have some information that we found.
The lab has found her parents.
They think they know who her parents are.
They are pretty sure they have identified who Mei Mei's biological parents are.
Wow.
Now, that couple also is raising a young girl who is the same age as Maymay.
We don't know if that's another embryo of theirs, if that is your embryo, if that is someone else's embryo.
We don't know anything about that other baby.
But we are pretty sure that this is May's parents.
But even still, the lawyers say, look, don't get your hopes up.
You know, it could be that this family is raising a third couple's child, that there were many families involved in this kind of confusion.
Or they could even be raising their own biological child and they had just had an embryo in the lab but got pregnant on their own.
It's definitely not a given that they are raising Daphna and Xander's biological child.
So there was a very real scenario in which Xander and Daphna would not find their baby or embryo and would only lose their child.
And so I remember saying in that moment, did I just lose my baby?
Asking them, did I just lose my baby?
Did I lose my baby?
And they didn't answer that question.
And so what happens after they find May's parents?
So right around Christmas, after some back and forth with the attorney and the other family, everyone involved agrees to do DNA tests of both babies and get some answers.
And?
The confirmed DNA results had come in.
It's a match.
And it came back 99.999% certainty that...
It was in fact our genetic baby that the other family had and that we had their genetic and there had to be some sort of direct switch.
That had happened.
There had been a direct swap.
This other couple was raising the biological child of Daphna and Xander, just as Daphna and Xander were raising the biological child of this other couple.
I mean, this is extraordinary.
So, instead of the classic switched at birth, we're talking about two babies that were switched in vitro.
Yeah.
I mean essentially by some fluke accident, likely human error, an embryo from one family was confused with another and was given to the wrong mother.
And Sue, aren't there a million protocols in place today?
To prevent such a thing.
I mean, I'm remembering when I was in the hospital, the arm bands, the security procedures.
I have to imagine an IVF lab goes to extraordinary lengths to make sure that the embryo belonging to one family could never end up in another family.
Yes, there are certainly protocols in place, and I'm sure all of these clinics aim for perfection.
They are also high volume, they are for profit, and they are widely considered to be underregulated.
So we don't have statistics about how often mistakes like this happen or really any other kinds of mistakes that happen in IVF fertilization.
What we can say is that we know this is not the only time this kind of mix-up has happened.
It does seem to be rare, but human error in those moments is at play.
Mistakes happen, sometimes with emotionally gutting results.
And it feels worth saying that May looks quite different from either of her parents, especially after that first newborn phase where she kind of resembles Dafna as a baby.
But you could easily imagine scenarios where a mixed-up embryo actually looks quite a bit like the wrong parents it's been inserted into, even if they aren't genetically related and therefore this might not be caught.
Yeah, it's totally possible that Daphna and Xander would never have found out any of this if the physical differences weren't so stark.
And it does make you wonder how common it is that this happens and the parents simply don't notice or just chalk it up to flukes of genetics.
What do Daphna and Xander ultimately learn about their biological life baby?
Well, they get a photograph first of their baby.
It was very surreal.
I remember it took me physically down.
I had to sit down.
I was walking downstairs it comes in a text message from the lawyer and it really hits them all at once.
All it says is they call her zoe and it was a picture of this adorable little baby that looked so shockingly familiar to me.
A lot like Olivia looked.
I mean, they look at this photograph and they just know that this is their biological child.
I think I felt I was feeling so many different feelings at the same time.
It's kind of hard to put into words for me.
I think I felt the guilt and the shame of not knowing her.
When I saw that picture, I'm like, how do I not know my baby?
And then on top of it, to make it all so much more poignant, there was this other crazy wrinkle, which is that their own biological baby had been living.
It turned out just a few miles from them.
Wow.
And it turned out later they'd been going to the same pediatrician.
And both moms had raised with the pediatrician their concerns about how unusual it was that their child looked so little like them.
All of this just seems unimaginable.
I'm curious what Xander and Daphna come to learn about This other couple just a few miles away who have been improbably raising their baby girl.
Well, you know, even just from the communications they were getting from the lawyer and the text that they were like getting glimpses of, I think they could see that they were, you know responsible, kind people, even just from like the very, very early interactions.
Mm-hmm.
And they learn that the father is Asian American, the mother is Latina.
And you know, they're sort of leading these parallel lives and you know, making similar decisions at the same time and having similar confusions at the same time too.
And just to spell this out, the question of what happens next for these parents is by no means clear or simple, right?
It's not like you can just say, oh, we found our genetic child.
Let's just swap babies.
Because by now, these children have grown in their mother's bellies.
Like you said, they share cells.
And they are, in effect, their children.
Yeah, that's right.
And, you know, you could also say that in many ways, these are the mother's biological children.
So there's no template for any of this.
These families have to figure out all of this for themselves.
And the way they do that is by starting really slowly.
What if we just exchange information and you guys just kind of get to know each other from here and then, And the first thing they do is decide to meet without the children at the lawyer's office?
In the following days between Christmas and New Year, when we went to.
So Daphna and Xander are, you know, waiting quite anxiously for this other couple to show up.
And they walked into that boardroom.
And as soon as they do, Daphna and Mamie's biological mother have this deep, deep hug.
The way that you two embraced each other, you said to her, you know, how are you doing or something?
And she said, terrible.
And you guys just embraced each other in such a way.
I mean I have to say that that was their first impulse is so touching to me because I think so many people might see that other mother as the enemy.
I don't know why it doesn't seem so obvious for a lot of people, but for me it feels obvious that they were in the same exact position that we were in.
You know, they were.
They found out that their daughter wasn't theirs.
They also had an older sibling.
You know, they were in the same position as us, and they were not the ones who made the mistake.
And we had no reason to to fight with them.
They weren't going to cause us any pain, but they both recognized in each other that almost no one in the world was experiencing the same pain that they each were, and they felt this gratitude that the other person had been raising their child.
Clearly, I mean, it's just such an unbelievably intense first meeting that, to me, gets off in such a loving way.
And then the dads kind of looked at each other.
I think and it was they were the ones who could say like by the end, you know, clearly we are going to be switching these babies and If it was going to happen, we knew it needed to happen before they got any older.
We needed to switch them before the stranger danger kicked in, so that they would feel comfortable in their homes and in their families.
But it's one thing to decide, okay, we're going to switch these babies.
It's another to think.
But how do we do it in a way that is best for the babies and also most bearable for the parents and also the siblings?
So they together came up with a plan, which is to do it in a way that allows the babies to adjust and frankly, allows all of the emotional stakeholders to adjust too.
And what did that plan actually look like?
So they had to schedule a first meeting.
And the way they decided to do it was to have both sets of parents and both babies meet for the first time at Xander and Daphna's house.
And Xander decided to document the moment on video.
I could hear Zoe, this baby, this child we had never met before.
I heard her before I saw her because I heard them walking up and she was crying.
And I instantly just recognized her cry.
It sounded exactly like Olivia when she was that age.
Sounds like my baby.
Sounds like Olivia.
Like I just locked eyes with her.
I was so happy and excited.
Oh, hi, Baba.
But at the same time, this wave of sadness washed over me of just how big she was.
She wasn't, you know, 30 seconds old.
She was three and a half, almost four months old.
And so it was such a complex feeling of being so excited and so happy and so in love with this little person and at the same time, processing all of those sad feelings.
Yeah, I don't remember.
I remember being extremely nervous, anxious.
I was really focused, I think, so much on May that maybe I don't remember as much about what was happening between me and Zoe.
I remember tracking May the whole time.
I just wanted that first meeting to go really well for them.
I wanted them to have that special connection.
And I wanted that first thing to be special for her, even though she wouldn't remember it, but like they would, and they would respond to that and take care of her.
I just needed it to go well for her.
In that moment, that first meeting, I was losing a child that I love so dearly that it sort of eclipses everything else.
For Daphna, her priority was making sure that the baby she'd been raising and to whom she was incredibly bonded and connected was having a good experience with her actual biological parents.
It was a little bit hard for her to really connect with Zoe in that moment.
So there's this tug, this tension.
Of which of these babies am I supposed to be mothering in this moment?
Because in a sense, she is mother to both.
Yeah, whose emotional needs are most pressing, are most emotional to me in this very moment?
Yeah.
And I think both mothers were also trying to figure out in real time what role to play vis-a-vis the other mother in the room.
So they're just processing so many layers of their own needs and the baby's needs.
So they had this first meeting, which was complicated, but it was a first step.
But it was only a first step.
The plan was to go back to each other and continue to sort of get to know each other a little bit further.
They decide that they're going to phase in meeting the babies, spending time with them, having the babies acclimate, having the siblings acclimate to their new siblings, and just spending time together until they're really ready to make a permanent switch.
It was a great plan.
Yeah.
I mean, in theory, it was actually the best way we should have done things.
And how did it feel to have this alone time with the babies?
It was really hard for the parents.
Yeah, you know honestly, I just I think I was really numb and super emotional, but I had to lock up my emotions during the day to get through the day.
So for me, I went into like almost like robotic, like I'm going to learn all the things that she likes.
I'm going to make it super comfortable.
Daphne talks about how she was really just trying to get through the day with Zoe and getting accustomed to taking care of her and building that relationship, while she was simultaneously really, really missing May.
Mm-hmm.
And so they went back and forth for a while until it really just became too challenging emotionally.
Like this is too much for everybody.
It wasn't about your ideal anymore.
And it was, it also became like, what are we doing?
We're just falling in love with someone else's baby.
Like we're falling in love with each other's babies right now, more and more and more.
Basically, it just became understood that it had to stop, that they just needed to make this switch as painful as it was.
And so just about three weeks after they first met, they did the final switch.
Mm-hmm.
And at first they decide they're not going to see each other for a little while, so everybody could sink into this new reality and accept it as their own.
I think Zoe had an easier time adjusting.
And Zoe, you know, was thriving.
She was adjusting fairly well.
But it took a very, very long time for Xander and Daphna to adjust.
For me falling apart, not to be super dramatic about it, but pretty much like wailing in the shower.
You know, the only super private place I could get was like the shower.
And so I would take a shower at night and just completely fall apart.
No, it sounded like just a wounded animal.
Yeah, just letting the tears and whatever needed to come out.
In fact, I think they would say that that pain is still very much still with them.
Of having to say goodbye to May.
Having to say goodbye, of feeling that they miss her, of feeling guilty that they are not raising her, even though they know she's in wonderful hands.
It's just, you know, it's really, really hard to raise kids even under the best circumstances.
Mm-hmm.
But in this case, all the usual guilt, all the usual regret, all the usual sense of loss that is so much part of parenting, because your kids are changing all the time.
I think all of that was just so amplified for everyone involved.
Mm hmm.
But there was another moment where you know I was aware of my own stuff and how much my own emotions were impacting the kids.
I was trying to be aware of it.
I think I can't fully be aware of it.
You were aware that you had grief that was clouding something.
Right.
And then comes this moment when Daphna realizes that what her own emotional turmoil is, she needs to find a way to put it away and really show up for Zoe as her mother and be her mother.
And it's really Zoe who kind of makes that clear to her.
I was taking the trash out and Zoe was in the house.
I came back to Zoe just crying beside herself because I had left her for a moment to take out the trash.
In that moment with Zoe, I was like I'm, for better or worse, I'm her mom.
I'm the only mom she's really gonna have now in this life.
I'm the one for Zoe, so she deserves to have me be fully present.
She needs me to get over my BS so that I can just be here for her and love her completely.
So, whatever defenses I have in place, because I don't want to be hurt again by losing somebody that I love, I have to say fuck it.
If I get hurt in the same way again, I get hurt in the same way again, but she has all of me.
I'm curious if being present for Zoe being really dialed in to Zoe inevitably means that Daphna and Xander need to cut off their contact with May.
Yeah, you could see how that would be a natural impulse, that it was just too confusing and it would just be easier if everybody went to their respective corners.
But that's not what happened.
We're like, okay, we haven't gone anywhere.
You guys haven't gone anywhere.
I just, I can't take it anymore.
I need to go and just see her.
You know, when the pandemic hit in 2020, there were lockdowns everywhere.
And sort of organically, the two families ended up creating one of those pods together.
We were dropping things off at each other's houses.
Yeah. like I remember, for like Easter.
And started spending more and more time together.
It was their birthdays.
It was the first major big holiday, right?
Eventually spending birthdays and holidays together.
Like.
A really solidifying moment was Thanksgiving, where I realized we'd been spending the whole year together.
Because it felt normal.
It was like, oh, this is just family now.
So, instead of longing for their children and missing them, these two families decided almost to become like one big family.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Chug, chug, chug it!
And Zoe and Mae become inseparable.
They talk about each other like sister best friends, best friend sisters.
Sister friends.
And that's the best way I know how to describe it is because sometimes they feel like sisters and sometimes they feel like friends.
One, two, three.
We're Daddy Xander and Mommy Dee.
Yeah, that's who we are.
That's how she knows us.
And it doesn't make sense to anybody else on the planet but her.
It's kind of hard to fathom a better outcome than the one you're describing here.
You can imagine so many alternative scenarios where these families ended up profoundly at odds, not speaking.
This could be filled with awkwardness and acrimony.
I'm curious, Sue when you were done reporting out this extraordinary saga, what did it teach you in what seems like this never-ending quest?
You have to understand families.
Well, of course, there is this real cautionary tale aspect to all of this.
But I think what it made me really recognize is that There will probably always continue to be new permutations of family that we haven't anticipated.
I mean there are going to continue to be technological advances that change the way we think about the formation of family, things with gene editing things, with genetic testing things, with embryo selection potentially increasing down the road.
Whatever it is the way that people form families and what kinds of permutations that's all going to keep growing and changing.
And Xander and Daphna and Zoe and Maymay and the other wonderful family in this story, they really give me great comfort that whatever comes along technologically, we do have the potential to manage it with humanity, love, good sense, grace, and that our idea of family might only continue to expand over time.
So, if I may be so bold, I think that for me this has been a story about the choices we make to love and how Xander and Daphna keep choosing to love.
They choose to love a baby even when she's not genetically theirs.
And then they choose to love the baby that was unknowingly taken from them.
And then they choose, on top of all of that, to fall in love with this other family that they've fallen into this completely unfathomable situation with.
That's a lot of choosing to love.
Yeah.
And I think that they were making a choice, you know, either to close their heart or to make it bigger.
And it's to everyone's benefit that they were able to make the choices that they did.
Well, Sue, thank you very much.
We'll be right back.
Here's what else you need to know today.
Tensions in Minneapolis flared on Thursday after President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to tamp down protests that have intensified over a second shooting by ICE agents.
The shooting occurred on Wednesday night when federal agents tried to arrest a Venezuelan national in the country illegally.
ICE officials said that the man resisted arrest and, joined by two others, attacked an ICE agent with a shovel and a broom, prompting the agent to fire his gun in self-defense.
Hey!
The shooting unleashed a new round of protests and deepened outrage from the state's Democratic leaders, including its governor, Tim Walz.
Let's be very, very clear.
This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement.
Instead, it's a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.
That, in turn, prompted Trump's threat to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy members of the military to Minnesota where, he claims, local officials have failed to protect ICE agents from the protesters.
Today's episode was produced by Diana Nguyen, Carlos Prieto, Luke Vanderplug, and Caitlin O'Keefe.
It was edited by Michael Benoit, contains music by Alisha Ba'itu, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.
That's it for The Daily.
I'm Michael Barbaro.
See you on Sunday when I'll bring you the new Sunday edition of our show.
