Chinese Baby Born Four Years After Parents Were Killed in Car Accident

A Chinese baby was born by a surrogate mother four years after his parents were killed in a car accident.

Parents Shen Jie and Liu Xi froze several embryos with the intent of having a child through in vitro fertilization (IVF) in 2013. Days before doctors were set to transfer one of the embryos into Liu, the couple died in a car crash in Jiangsu.

Following the incident, the couple's parents embarked on a lengthy legal battle to obtain the fertilized eggs, which were being kept at a hospital in Nanjing. The soon-to-be grandparents eventually won custody and baby Tiantian was born by a Laotian surrogate last December, reported The Beijing News.

The legal battle was lenthy due to there being no precedent as to whether the four grandparents were entitled to inherit their children's fertilized eggs, Chinese media noted at the time.

After a judge granted the embryos, they then encountered several other problems. The eggs were only allowed to be transferred from the Nanjing hospital if another hospital agreed to store them, but with surrogacy being against the law in China, finding an institution to facilitate proved difficult.

The four grandparents-in-waiting eventually decided to enlist the services of a surrogacy agency in Laos, where it is legal. Due to airlines refusing to transport the small bottle of liquid nitrogen, they then had to drive the embryos down the country to Laos.

The next problem was determining the citizenship of the baby. The surrogate travelled to China on a tourist visa and gave birth on mainland territory.

After the birth late last year, all four grandparents took DNA blood tests to confirm they were related to the boy. The results came back positive, proving the deceased parents of the boy had both been Chinese.

According to South China Morning Post, the grandparents were overjoyed that Tiantian finally made it into the world after years of stuggle and will continue on their bloodline.