A Chinese couple has managed to have a child four years after their death, this was due to a surrogate mother who gave birth to their child.
The baby Tiantian, which means ‘sweet,’ was born in China in December to a Laotian surrogate mother.
Shen Jie and Liu Xi the deceased couple were married for two years before their untimely death in a car accident in Yixing in Jiangsu province in March 2013. They had been part of a fertility treatment before their deaths and had frozen their embryos planning to give birth via in-vitro fertilisation.
Although the child has no living parents his four grandparents have reportedly proven relations through DNA.
After the unfortunate death of the couple, their parents fought a lengthy legal battle to be given the fertilised eggs that were frozen in a Nanjing hospital’s liquid nitrogen tank.
There was no precedent for the legal battle as local media outlets report, but eventually, the grandparents won custody of the embryos.
They then had to find a surrogate. Since it is currently illegal in China to be a surrogate, they had to look abroad, eventually hiring an agency and settling on Laos, where surrogacy is not prohibited.
Liu’s mother, Hu Xinxian, told Beijing News: “Tiantian’s eyes look like my daughter’s but overall, he looks more like his father.”
The four new grandparents said they were thrilled that they are able to continue the families’ bloodline.
Shen Xinnan, the father of Shen Jie, was quoted as saying that he only plans to tell the boy what happened to his parents when he is older and in the meantime will say they are living overseas.
“For sure we will tell him what happened – what choice do we have?” Shen said.
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