TRADED AT BIRTH
A Crazy True Personal Story
TRADED AT BIRTH
Imagine life with two reality options. Two different worlds. World A. World B. Opposite ends of the spectrum. That was my situation.
Here’s my unbelievable story.
I’ve been told that the many years ago that it took place, my birth at the Swedish Hospital in Seattle, wasn’t an easy one. That makes total sense in light of the challenging (I prefer ‘complex’) person I became.
To mitigate the situation to some degree, the doctors gave my mother some kind of knock-out drug. As I was growing up, always pushing the envelope, I imagine that she often wished she had access to that same knock-out drug.
Too bad. With a son like me, who could really blame her. After enjoying my sweet, lovely older sister, Joanie, for a couple years, she had no idea what she was asking for when she asked God for a little baby boy.
After the birth, as my mother was slowly coming out of her drug-induced happy-place, the nurses brought in her newborn baby. “What a beautiful, beautiful baby,” she thought to herself. “Such wonderful eyes. And its nose. It’s just perfect. The perfect baby. This makes me so happy.” As she held it and coddled it, she took off its baby wrap.
A big mistake.
With a bit of uncertainty and hesitancy in her voice, she addressed the nurses, “Uhm…hello nurses. You know… Uhm, I’m so sorry to inconvenience you, but I thought I had a baby boy?” “No,” the nurses said with the confidence of concrete, “This is your baby.”
With understandable confusion and concern, my mom answered, “But I’m pretty sure that I had a boy. I think I remember seeing his little ‘thing’. Could you please go back and check? Please? I’m just pretty sure I had a boy. Can you please do that for me?”
After a certain amount of debate, the nurses reluctantly left my mother’s room with the baby. Needless to say, my mother was becoming quite anxious and disquieted about the situation. More knock-out drug please.
Finally, after a few minutes, the nurses returned, this time with a different baby. “How about this one?” they said, cavalierly handing off the new baby to my mom.
My mother took the baby and looked it over carefully. After determining that this baby was in fact a boy, and although not nearly as cute and beautiful as the first baby, my mother reluctantly claimed it as her own. “This is my baby” she exclaimed. “This is definitely my baby!”
And, in fact, that was me. And that is how I started life in this world. Thank God life is full of second chances. After only being alive around ten minutes, I already got my first second chance.
The nurses didn’t listen to me when I was trying to tell them, “I want my mommy! My real mommy!” (this by way of my very first crying temper tantrum). Fortunately, the real mommy and the real baby were joyfully united and lived happily ever after. Well, that’s not quite true, but they’re nice words to say.
The nurses were not all that remorseful, as though it was a common occurrence. I mean, a baby is a baby, right?
I was ever so close to entering an alternate reality.
One question that has bothered me my entire life; did my temporary mother nurse me? If so, did that affect my personality? Can I blame my challenges on her?
This situation triggered several other questions to my highly evolved, ever-inquisitive, always active mind. Did the mother of the other baby know that she nearly ended up with a less-cute baby boy instead of a charmingly cute little girl? Had she taken the knock-out drugs as well?
Here’s a thought; did the nurses give the knock-out drugs to mothers in order to switch babies as some kind of devious plot? To wreak havoc on world order?
What would my life have been like being raised in another family? If the girl had ended up in my family maybe it would have been preferable, as then there would have been three girls and three boys. Even.
Maybe my ‘other’ family was totally rich. What would life have looked like then?
Being as supremely highly evolved as I am, I decided to do a little deep dive research on this subject.
I found that such a switch occurs extremely rarely, but it does happen. Here’s a few totally exciting examples that I found:
In 1951, at a hospital in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, the babies of Mary Miller and Kay McDonald were accidentally switched. Mary Miller immediately suspected that a switch had occurred, as the baby she received weighed a full two pounds less than at the hospital. Mary Miller knew Kay McDonald, and assumed that it was their baby she had taken home. However, discouragement from her husband kept Mary from actively pursuing her suspicion for 43 years, when she revealed to the now grown girls, Sue McDonald and Martha Miller, what she suspected of their births. Genetic tests later confirmed that a switch did in fact occur. The story was featured on an episode of the radio show This American Life.[9][10]
In 1953, at Pioneer Memorial Hospital in Heppner, Oregon, two babies were switched. In May 2009, the women discovered they were switched. DeeAnn Angell of Fossil and Kay Rene Reed of Condon learned about the mistake from an 86-year-old woman who was a former neighbor. The former neighbor said that one of the girls’ mothers, Marjorie Angell, insisted back in 1953 that she had been given the wrong baby after nurses returned from bathing them. But her concerns were ignored. With both sets of parents dead, the Reed and Angell siblings compared notes and family stories, learning that rumors of a mix-up had been around for years. Kay Rene Reed decided to get their DNA tested, and that confirmed the mistake. They both say they just have to move forward with their lives now, and they celebrated their latest birthday together.
In March 1953, at San-Ikukai Hospital in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward, hospital staff mistook a baby boy for another baby boy born 13 minutes later. This story was referred to as the tale of the Japanese “prince and pauper.” Sixty years later, a 60-year-old Japanese truck driver discovered he was switched at birth after being born to a rich family. The man was raised by a single mother in a 100-square-foot apartment. The boy who was raised in his place by the rich family became the president of a real estate company.
In the mid 1950s, Richard Beauvais and Eddy Ambrose were born hours apart in a small, municipally run rural hospital in Arborg, Manitoba, and then sent home with the wrong parents. In 2021, members of their family did DNA testing and discovered the switch. Their story was featured in The New York Times in 2023.[14]
In 2001, it was reported that a 35-year-old woman from the Canary Islands had discovered that she was one of a set of identical twins and that she had been accidentally switched at birth with another girl. She grew up as an only child, until a friend of her twin mistook her for being that twin. The person was shocked by the striking similarity in appearance and summoned them together. They took a DNA test, which proved they were identical twins. The twin who had grown up thinking that another girl was her twin said that the girl she thought was her twin looked nothing like her. Since the women were born in a state hospital, they sued the government for damages.
In 1992, it was discovered that Canadians Brent Tremblay and Marcus Holmes had been switched at birth 21 years earlier. The error was discovered when Brent and his identical twin George Holmes met each other at Carleton University in Ottawa. The Children’s Aid Society of Ontario later settled with the families involved.[17]
In 1975, at least two known cases occurred in Norway House, Manitoba, of babies being switched at birth at the Norway House Hospital: Luke Monias and Norman Barkman,[18] and Leon Swanson and David Tait Jr.[19] Both pairs of boys were from the same small communities, and had been lifelong friends of their switch-mates before learning of the switches only in the mid-2010s.
In 1978, Kimberly Mays and Arlena Twigg were switched at birth as a result of a medical error in a hospital in Wauchula, Florida;[20] the events surrounding their case were subsequently dramatized as the TV movie Switched at Birth.
The sons of two South African women, Margaret Clinton-Parker and Sandra Dawkins, were accidentally switched at birth in 1989; the women sued in the High Court of South Africa in Johannesburg in 1995, demanding damages of ZAR120,000 each from the government of the province of Gauteng for the error.[25] Later that year, they were awarded damages to cover medical expenses and the future projected costs of visiting their biological children.[26][27] Each family kept the child they had been living and raised them as their own even after learning of the switch. That was until one of the boys, Robin, at the age of 15, decided to leave Sandy Dawkins to go and live with his biological mother Margaret Clinton-Parker. The boys spent the remainder of their childhood living as brothers.[28]
So, as attested by these anecdotes, it certainly does happen. But ever so rarely.
The interesting thing is that there is no mention of babies of the opposite sex being switched. Maybe I would have been the first! How bizarre would that have been when each family found out years later that their birth child wasn’t the sex of the child they raised.
What would they do with with such a revelation? Can you imagine it?
Imagine they somehow discovered the mistake when each child was like, seventeen? What would they do? Switch? I don’t think so.
So there it is. That’s my alternate reality story.
This was the first of many bizarre situations I’ve experienced over my lifetime. It must have been some kind of presage, portend or prognostication of future events that would eventually unfold in my life.
I’m certainly glad that the knock-out drug was wearing off and my mom was cognizant enough and tough enough to claim me and get me into the family that I was designed to be in. Although I’m sure she likely regretted many times, as the years went by, not claiming the cute little girl baby.
Incidentally, I have five siblings that, although not as highly evolved as I am, all have similar looks to mine, so I’m confident that I ended up in the right place.
I believe that each of us are created by God for our unique purpose in this world and our family is a big part of that. In fact, it blows my mind how thoughtful and wonderful God’s plan is for families.
No matter what your family history is, it is good to be thankful. Thankful for the positive things that happened in your family. No matter what your family history is, you were created as the unique person that you are. You were called for such a time as this. You have a wonderful purpose and destiny.
I recommend that you give praise and honor to God for your God-given life.
Thank you for reading my story. ‘Likes’ are always appreciated.
So well written