A woman has been urged to leave her husband after she made the shocking discovery that their baby is not genetically hers.
The unnamed 36-year-old woman took to Reddit to ask for advice, writing about her predicament in the infamous 'Am I The A**Hole' thread.
She explained how she ended up in the bizarre predicament, revealing that she and her 35-year-old husband had been unsuccessfully trying to conceive for four years before they decided to have a child by surrogate, which was born two years ago.
The woman revealed: "I had always wanted to be a mom. Devastated is an understatement regarding how I felt when I found out I have a medical condition that would make it nearly impossible to carry a baby to term.
"It was even more upsetting when I had to get a major surgery to remove uterine growths with the hope to increase fertility and complications during surgery warranted a partial hysterectomy involving removal of my uterus only.
"I still had my ovaries so we started looking into cost of a surrogate."
After discovering how prohibitively expensive surrogacy would be, one of her closest friends who she'd known since college offered to step in to carry their child after having had two of her own kids.
The friend became pregnant on the third cycle of IVF and ended up carrying a son to term for the couple, leaving them delighted.
However, things were soon set to change, as the woman explained: "I was so happy and busy after the birth, between being a mom and returning to work after a 4 week parental leave, so I didn't notice any warning signs."
She added: "My friend and my husband started talking more and I would sometimes come home from my weekend job to find her already hanging out at our house when my husband was there.
"I chalked it up as innocuous and it's good for her to know my husband better since she was in the process of hopefully carrying our child for us. I was grateful to have someone helping us have a child.
"I also thought it weird that our son has brown eyes when both of us have blue. Then I found out that while this is uncommon, it's possible sometimes due to many genes controlling eye color."
After brushing it to the side, things came to a head when the woman took her son to the doctor for blood tests which showed "he had a blood type that is not biologically possible to have with me as his mother. (He's B+, I'm A+, husband is O+)."
Her first thought was that the fertility clinic may have "messed up and implanted a wrong embryo" and decided to have a DNA test done in order to potentially pursue a legal claim against the clinic.
She was shocked to find that when the results came in, the baby was a biological match to her husband, but not to her.
Things were only set to get worse, as she added: "I was heartbroken and angrier than ever, talked to lawyers about medical malpractice in the fertility clinic we'd used.
"Then my husband confessed that he'd slept with my friend (our surrogate) on a few different occasions during our struggle to have her get pregnant with our embryos.
"This means what I thought was our son conceived by IVF and carried with a surrogate, isn't my son at all and was in fact conceived the old fashioned way, which I can't ever do."
She revealed that she was left "livid and absolutely broken", and that her husband had told her he believed that he wouldn't have been able to get her best friend pregnant because he'd thought the reason they were unable to conceive in the first place was down to him.
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"I felt an immediate triple betrayal: from what was supposed to be my husband, my friend, and now knowing my child isn't even really mine. I had such white hot rage and delirium, I immediately left home and stayed at a hotel for almost a week before asking my parents to let me stay at home for a while," she revealed.
She added that she is going to file for divorce and has cut her friend off, and is working with a lawyer to cut her legal ties to the child, who isn't biologically her son.
The unnamed woman also revealed that her own parents put pressure on her not to abandon her surrogate son, adding: "My parents also say I can't just give up on a kid that I went through so many legal and medical hoops to have.
"When I told them I refuse to stay in a cheater marriage and I'd rather adopt someday with a better more trustworthy partner, they also told me I was wrong and that maintaining my parental rights isn't much different than if I adopted outright. They said it isn't blood that makes a family.
"They are all about me divorcing my cheater husband but keep telling me I'm making a mistake giving up my parental rights."
People flooded the comments to offer their support to the wife, writing: "NTA [not the a**hole], You do not have to raise a child that is the product of an affair. I think the people in your life pushing for that are not really thinking about how impossible that is going to be. Every time you see that kid, you will be reminded of those deep betrayals. I will be better for you AND the child if you separate NOW, versus trying to white knuckle through it and separate later, which will likely happen regardless.
"Make a clean break as quickly as possible and begin to do things for you, as the healing process is going to be continual for a long time. Grief comes in many forms, and you need time to grieve this loss of a marriage and a child you thought was yours. He is NOT your child. You should not maintain parental rights. Let the father and the actual mother figure it out."
Another commented: "NTA. that's NOT your son. let the two of them play house together since that's what they want. And how dare your ex friend try and accuse you if abandoning the child, it's HER CHILD. SHE should be the one raising him."
Someone else added: "NTA - Not one bit, id consider going LC with your parents too for not supporting you through this major betrayal. I would even take it a step further and see if you can sue your ex husband for anything, dont give him everything just because he has a kid, let your ex friend start paying child support."
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