Right before the Love Bug was born, I whispered to the Groom, “Don’t take your eyes off her.” And by her, I meant the baby. It was going to be a C-section, the baby was breech, and I knew the Bride would be busy on the OR table. He looked at me kinda funny, but I said with fierce determination, “Promise me!” And he stayed with the Love Bug till they rolled her out to us.
Call me crazy, and I’m sure some people do, but I’ve seen too many mistakes happen in hospitals over the years, heard about too many nearly averted catastrophes, plus you know that old superstition, which I highly believe, about medical families. I’ve talked about it before, how people will try and treat you differently in the hospital when they learn you are related to doctor so and so, or nurse what’s his name.
And my mind thinks in a kind of catastrophic way. It’s a wonder I’m not on IV anxiety medicine at all times. Bob is late for our wedding? Wringing my hands I think he must have cold feet; instead, he couldn’t find the rabbi. Maybe it has to do with my Year of Living Dangerously. I’ve always thought I was the least affected by that trauma – the death of my father followed by a devastating car accident that landed me in a foster home. The Flapper was crippled, my sister and nana were in a coma, and my brothers were on their own. I was just a baby, I had no real memories of my first year of life. But there were lasting scars, wounds you’d never see when you grow up between two families.
I didn’t want my grand daughter switched at birth!
I had those feelings when my children were born, but Bob was right there and he knew about my fear, so he kept a close eye on things. After all, we were in his hospital, he knew everybody, and the Bride’s little foot was banded and toe-printed immediately. Here is a synopsis of the bizarre switched-at-birth story I had heard about before the Bug’s birth on “This American Life.” It happened in Wisconsin in 1951: “One of the mothers realized the mistake but chose to keep quiet. Until the day, more than 40 years later, when she decided to tell both daughters what happened. How the truth changed two families’ lives.” http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/360/switched-at-birth
And just when you think that with technology these things never happen anymore, think again. A court case has just finished up in France awarding two families 2M Euros. Because at the age of ten, one girl felt she didn’t look like her father.
The families of two French girls who were accidentally switched at birth 20 years ago have been awarded nearly €2m (£1.5m) in damages. The clinic involved in the mix-up was ordered to compensate both girls – now women – their parents and siblings.Both babies had been treated in the same incubator and were then given to the wrong parents. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31350550
This must have been a cost-saving effort, putting two babies in the same incubator. Back in Wisconsin, one mother always thought there had been a mistake, her daughter was nothing like the rest of the family. But she never spoke up.
My daughter reassured me they kept close watch when she delivered Baby Boy JH in November, with his father and a doula plus the requisite docs and nurses in the room. I was still driving and worrying but immediately felt relieved when I looked into his eyes. Plus, Grandma Ada says she knows him. I think he looks like one of her sons, or the Groom’s brother. We’re not entirely sure yet. 
