Melissa Russell and baby Violet Faith
"As featured on ABC's World News Tonight" are the first words on PregnancyStore.com, referring to last summer's story
about a revolutionary new test called Baby Gender Mentor that promised
to reveal your unborn baby's gender at just 5 weeks after conception.
The
baby gender test appears again on ABC World News Tonight, but this time
the story is different. Instead of an amazing medical
breakthrough, tonight's story is about a lawsuit filed by angry mothers
against the test's maker, Acu-Gen BioLabs.
Melissa Russell, of Texas, isn't just upset that Acu-Gen got her
baby's gender wrong. When her Baby Gender Mentor result was a boy, but
ultrasound revealed she was carrying a girl, Acu-Gen insisted the test
was correct, and warned Melissa to expect a baby boy with "ambiguous
genitalia".
I was crying, and I called my family, and I called my pastor, and I asked for prayer.
Melissa Russell, Baby Gender Mentor customer
Melissa's baby girl, Violet Faith, was born in December with
completely normal female genitals. Melissa paid out of pocket for
genetic testing to confirm that her daughter's chromosomes are normal
as well.
Other women have shared their Acu-Gen woes with the press as well; links below.
These women feel that they've been taken for a ride, at a very emotional and special time in their life.
Nell Boyce, NPR
About Maureen
Click to play the Fountains of Wayne song about Maureen!
"Maureen, you're givin' me too much information!"
My Kiddies
My DH
(And never had a fight!)
About Me
In 1999, my two sons were 4 and 2 years old, and we were ready to have another baby. I hoped to have a daughter, and I turned to the Internet to search for ways of increasing the odds of conceiving a girl. I discovered the iVillage Gender Determination Board. On the board, I found information about at-home and high-tech sex selection methods, but more importantly, I discovered I wasn't alone. I was one among a legion of mothers who longed desperately for a daughter, keeping it a secret so others wouldn't think, wrongly, that we loved our sons less, and feeling guilty becuse we're not supposed to care if a baby's a boy or a girl, "as long as it's healthy". There were, of course, also mothers hoping just as much to add a son to their all-girl family.
After a lot of research and soul-searching, my husband I decided to try MicroSort. In the fall of 2000, I became pregnant on our first MicroSort attempt, by IUI. At 20 weeks of pregnancy, we discovered we were having twins, a boy and a girl! We were thrilled to have a daughter at last, and a new son to cherish too.
During my journey to conceive a daughter, I was so grateful for the support and information volunteered by others on the boards; mothers who didn't even know me, but were willing to help me, hope for me, and cry along with me, when there was no one I could turn to "in real life". I know that without being able to talk personally with women who had tried MicroSort, I would have never gone through with this daunting, complex procedure; and that we would have never had a daughter as part of our family.
Now that my journey's finished, this Web site is just my way of giving some of that help back, to you.