Monday, November 4, 2024Â – Two women realized they had been
given to the wrong mothers 55 years after they were switched at birth in an NHS
hospital.
The women were born in the West Midlands in 1967
and were taken to the nursery, where it was standard for newborns to sleep at
this time in order for mothers to rest.
But when they were returned, they were mixed up.
They only realized the mix-up after at-home DNAs returned
surprising results decades later.
In the BBC documentary The Gift, the families
spoke about the devastating fallout, with one daughter telling how she always
felt “like an imposter” growing up and one mother telling how her
daughter no longer calls her “mum”.
The two women, named Jessica and Claire in the documentary
though these are not their real names, are now in line for compensation from
the NHS, with the amount not yet disclosed.
The mistake was revealed when Claire, as well as Jessica’s
brother “Tony”, both took DNA tests, which revealed they were
biological siblings.
Confused by the result, they spoke to one another about what
might have led to it which revealed the connection with the same hospital.
Newborns in the UK are now given radio frequency
identification (RFID) tags immediately, which allow their location to be
tracked, meaning babies being accidentally switched is now extremely unlikely.
But before the 1980s, wards relied on handwritten tags,
which left much more room for error.
Clare had been surprised by her own results, which showed no
biological link to those she had thought were her relatives, and a cousin
listed she did not know.
While Tony was worried by his results and fearful of
upsetting his mother, now in her eighties, Claire felt more as if the results
had explained something about her relationship with her family:
“There were no similarities, in looks or traits […] I
thought, ‘Yes – I’m adopted’.”
She and Tony discussed what best to do, with Tony saying he
would take her to lead with whether she wanted to “progress this at
all”.
Claire was eager to meet her biological family and was very
emotional to meet her birth mother and feel as though they had always known
each other.
She found it hard to discuss her own childhood, which she
described as “very difficult” being raised in “absolute poverty,
homelessness, often went hungry, and all that entails”.
Breaking the news to the mother who brought her up, who died
earlier this year, was the hardest thing she ever faced, though she reassured
them nothing would change her feelings towards her.
Jessica’s mother, Joan, told the BBC she was delighted to
reunite with Claire and felt she had gained a daughter.
But the story was less happy for Jessica, who declined to be
interviewed for the documentary and no longer calls Joan “mum”.
Joan said: “It doesn’t make any difference to me that
Jessica isn’t my biological daughter. She’s still my daughter and she always
will be.”
Claire said she now intends to make as much as she can of
time with her new family but knows it will never be enough as the time she
should have spent was “taken away”.
