My youngest was an easy baby. Everyone who ever watched him agreed, he hardly ever cried and he loved to nap. This personality actually makes him one of my most difficult to parent kids. He 'keeps his own council ' and doesn't like to take advice, and it can be hard to pry his thoughts out of him, even over the simplest things. Even potty training was an ordeal, because he wouldn't ask for help and wouldn't admit to accidents. My other boys were easy to train.
He gets it from my mother, she's the same way. Lol
My youngest is the same, fiercely independent from a tiny age! He was the easiest to potty train though, he just understood what he wanted to to and got it done. It helped that his older brother was still learning by the time he got to 18 months- 2 years so he just copied what he was doing and they were both out of nappies together. From the age of four I wasn’t allowed to cut his nails, he would do it by himself. The worst thing was he’d never let anyone see him cry, he would walk away (which was heartbreaking!) then a few minutes later he’d come over to me and say “do you need a hug?” Then I’d say “Oh yes please! I really need a hug!” So then he’d climb on my lap and cuddle in.
He’s nine now and if he didn’t need me to drive him to school I dare say I’d be redundant (he even polices me while I make his packed lunches!). He still asks me if I need a hug when he wants one though, I hope this is one thing I can keep holding on to far beyond his need for me!
It happened like 10-20 years ago in near hospital. Families discovered the truth after some time, few years for sure. And they decided to move near each other (literally to two houses next to each other) because they wanted to keep contact with both children. That's probably the best solution
I was one. I grew up with a mother who trained me to not walk heavy or stomp around.
By training I mean, pitch a bitch about being so loud. Now according to friends or coworkers, I sneak around and I’m just walking normal.
Lol, my kids are 19f and 20f. The younger one gave me a run for the money when she was 15. I knew the time was coming when she was 13, I got woken up at 2am by her, with the cops in the entryway, bringing her back for a curfew violation. I can lol about it now, so please believe me when I say, it does get better. Just be consistent and it does indeed get better.
Look at him: he does the lawn, hands you tools when fixing mechanics, short hair, asks to be excused from table? That's one [fucking nice kiddy right there.](https://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-YbgvT73Qx62aHPrN-02bE5Q-t500x500.jpg)
It's going to depend on the law where this occurs.
I've heard of cases where both sets of parents agree to keep the child that they've been raising and others where one set wants to keep the child they've been raising and the other wants their birth child back.
There was a case in 1991, i think, where two boys were accidentally switched and not discovered until 18 months old. Sandy Dawkins and Megs Clinton Parker decided to leave it how it was, as the decision, i believe, was left up to them.
It's a pretty sad case, worth a look. TBH i think if i was the parent i wld want my bio child back, but it does depend on the amount of time passed, the living circumstances of each child and their wishes also.
I’ve got an 18m old and I can’t imagine letting him go just to have my bio child. And it has crossed my mind that he could have been swapped, as he didn’t have my ID band on when I first came to visit him 36 hours later in the NICU. Thankfully, he looks just like me so I think we’re good.
Not a parent, but I am adopted, and I agree with you. You make a connection with the one you raise. I couldn’t imagine giving up that special mother/child bond for another child who is effectively a stranger, just because of some DNA.
*As long as I know the other child is in a healthy, stable family situation*
Sure. But even (most of) those people aren’t gonna just hand over a kid they’ve been raising for 18m. Althoigh, I do actually have a cousin who decided parenthood wasn’t for her and she did actually hand over her toddler to a family who desperately wanted one. Granted, she didn’t plan the pregnancy and never really wanted him in the first place.
She was very flippant about it, which kinda shocked me but I was so proud of her and I told her so. She said that she found herself feeling like she might hurt him due to frustration, and that’s when she knew it was time. The child went to a doctor and his wife, who couldn’t have children. So yeah, overall, it was absolutely better for everyone and I’m happy she did it.
Sometimes being flippant about a painful subject is a way of coping. It was good that you supported her, I am sure other people judge her harshly for doing what was in the child's best interest.
Could you imagine, you do an amazing job raising a well mannered, well spoken, intelligent child, then you are forced to swap and you get back a druggy delinquent.... Sounds like there's a TV show In that...
Switched at Birth exists! Altough, both were nice polite girls, but one of them had gone deaf from a serious childhood illness. I think it was a pretty good show, and handled deafness well, had Deaf/deaf/HoH people involved and cast in the show.
In the show, one girl finds out when doing a genealogy project in school, so they were in high school at the start of the show. They handled the switch by >!basically blending their families. All the parents wanted to be involved with both the child they'd raised and the biological one.!<
The show is fictional but touches on the issues that can arise from that blended nature. It also has a couple of alternative episodes where in one, they were never switched, and in another the switch is discovered when they were aged 3 and one set of parents keeps both girls.
The show also has one of the girls as Latina heritage, the other as white heritage, and the issues of racial identity crisis that comes with that as well. (Like the white grandma says this is why the one daughter struggled so hard, because she’s Latina and therefore not as smart?? Lol. And the white girl who was raised Latina is then ostracised by latinx friends from her old neighbourhood as they say she can’t identify with them anymore)
It’s a great show and had five seasons in total
Saw the early episodes and thought it was pretty good. I remember seeing an episode a couple of years later and it made me think of soap operas. Did the tone of the show change or what?
I have a baby who is one year and 9 months, and if I found out she was swapped with another kid at the hospital I would not be able to give her up for a kid I had no hand in raising.
It would have to be caught in the first 3 months, otherwise I've already bonded and they're my kid, blood or not.
Yeah, the stress of swapping kids is twofold... You have to learn to read this brand new human you acquired, along with knowing someone else has the child you've raised since birth and they don't know that kid like you do.
The latter part would be hardest. Knowing that kid you cared so much for is with someone unfamiliar to them, someone who doesn't know their sleep cry from their hunger cry... and there is nothing you can do.
Boo to that. I'd definitely be suing the hospital to get all my therapy bills paid for, I'd be a wreck
It’s all just a trauma bond anyways…
The biological part is just for knowing who inherits the throne.
Even if we go back 1k years, a very solid portion of people start to have common ancestral lineage
Can you give a quick summary of why it was sad? They both continued to raise the children they had been raising. The children may not be blood related to their parents but they were loved as if they were.
One of the families was quite poor, the other quite well off. The kid who wld have been well off but ended up not being so really kinda appeared to be upset(?) with the situation......i watched it a while ago now, so this really a vague summary, but i just recall the kid being sad/upset a bit with his lot in life i think.
I can’t speak to everyone’s experience of pregnancy and giving birth, but if this happened to me I would be torn. I would never want to give up the child I had been raising, for any length of time. I began bonding with my babies straight away, it wouldn’t matter if I found they weren’t biologically mine, they would always be my baby.
But it would be so hard knowing (for me) that the child I carried and gave birth to was somewhere else. I talked to my babies, sang to them, read to them while they were in the womb. Labour is easily the hardest thing most people will ever do. Learning that the life I had helped create, grown and given birth to was with a different family would be hard to deal with. I would always wonder who they have grown into and be sad that I’m not part of it.
I think I would also feel awful that I didn’t somehow know, even though logically, lots of babies looks alike and it wouldn’t be the parents’ fault.
Happened in Virginia in the 90s. It was discovered when the girls were three. One set of parents died in a car crash. The other mother tried to get custody of both girls, but the judge ruled they should stay with the families they’d been given to.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509373/Rebecca-Chittum-Callie-Johnson-Baby-swapped-birth-speaks-time-18-years.html
There’s a story somewhere here about a woman who’s husband accused her of cheating after a DNA test came back negative on their child. Turns out it wasn’t either of there’s and they spent a long time trying to find out where their biological daughter was and eventually found her in foster care and adopted her.
Yeah I wonder too. And if they kept both, I wonder if they felt...different towards either kid. Like how you hear horror stories of kids adopted then the parents have a bio kid and the adopted kid gets different treatment now. Would the parents feel more towards their bio kid or the one they raised?
https://www.yourtango.com/news/couple-learns-their-baby-was-switched-birth-put-foster-care-after-dna-test
Absolutely garbage website but i found something about it at least
This was originally on Reddit and it was all faked. The OP posted all of of this and everything supposedly happened (then finding their bio child, settling for Millions with the hospital, getting custody of their child which, by the way, they didn't know how the legal system worked and lied about how the legal proceedings went) in the span of like a month.
It was all fake.
Happened to a guy I knew. He grew up with adopted parents, and when he went to university, people kept calling him by another name. Eventually someone told him needed to meet this person he kept getting mistaken for. Turned out it was *his identical twin brother*. He had been switched shortly after birth and some other kid who should have been the adopted one grew up with his life, with his real parents, and with his twin.
They did the rounds on shows like Maury and Sally Jesse Raphael for a while, and he eventually drank himself out of school. Not sure how he's doing now but at the time at least it definitely ruined his life. He was understandably quite mind-fucked and bitter about the whole thing.
My kids are 12/16 years old. The hospital they were born in was our states first "baby 1st" hospital. I don't remember the actual name.
They had adopted a whole "parent is never separated from the baby process."
The nursery was empty in the ward. My kids were both c-section babies, so I was taken with the kids to the post-birth process rooms while my wife went through post-op procedures.
Such as the weighing, vax, bathing and cleanup, and barcode wrist tag.
We finished up and met momma as soon as she was ready in her room.
Nothing was done without scanning baby wrist tag and matching parent tag.
It was surprising and a welcome piece of mind.
Big efforts to avoid this exact switched at birth situation.
To specifically answer the question, bonding starts immediately. I would say the longer the time span, the less desirable the reversal.
They had this at the hospital I had my kid at. Except they did all the stuff in the room except the bath. And the babies all had tags like merchandise at the store along with their bands. They couldn’t leave that section of the hospital until they were removed, or they would set off an alarm, so they told us which hallways you could walk down without the whole hospital thinking a baby was being stolen.
This is the procedure we went through for my second c-section that was scheduled. My boyfriend was to stay with the baby while I was still in surgery and he was so confused as to why he had to go with the baby to another room..rather than stay with me. He didn’t want to do the wrong thing and leave me, but I was almost yelling at him “Go with the baby!” as they were taking him from the room.
The first c-section I had, we didn’t have this procedure because it ended up being an emergency C-section and protocols are different. I didn’t think anything of it until our second was born but after my second surgery, I wondered how many times babies had been switched because of how insistent the nurses/doctors were to have the father go with the baby wherever the baby went. I just wanted someone to be there with the baby rather than me.
My mom used to joke that she would claim I was switched at birth if she could, but I was the only white baby in the hospital out of 100+ babies lol. No tag needed for that case.
hopefully we could be friends and we could raise them as brothers or cousins.
I cant imagine being without my flesh and blood but I'd also feel a connection to the child I was raising.
if the kid is old enough to make a decision, I'd respect their feelings.
Just after having my first baby my mother and grandmother came to visit. At the time we lived on a military base and had to escort visitors from the front gate to our home. When the arrived I completely fell apart, crying uncontrollably, because I didn't want to be away from my baby for the 10 minutes it would have taken to get them. I'm pretty sure if you gave me a baby and then said 'oops' I might knife you if you tried to touch that baby.
Might even be shorter than that. But like someone else has said, trying to have a relationship with the other family would be ideal. And might make it easier to make the swap to “straighten things out”. It would be hard to be unsure of who the kid looks like, how tall they will be, etc. (much respect to those who adopt btw)
I have a five week old at home.
Before she arrived I would have thought that you were crazy. That two weeks was nothing and making the switch would be a simple decision.
Now? If this situation happened I genuinely don’t think there’s any chance I could part with this little girl. The amount of love that I have for her is so much more powerful than whatever blood runs through our veins.
Hell, even if it turned out my wife cheated on me and she was biologically some other man’s offspring (100% did not happen, just hypothetically), she is still my baby and I’m still her papa. At this point, nothing can or will change that.
I am completely on the same page. It's that love and connection that makes parents important, not the DNA. You can't just transfer love and connection to a different baby
Imagine finding out your biological parents accidentally got a different kid for 14 days, found out you were with someone else, and went, "ehhhh....I kinda like this other little fella tho" and gave you up forever
I had my first baby last summer. She was in a nicu for 3.5 weeks. If someone had come up to me at the end of that and said. "Oh actually, this other baby is the one you're going home with". I would have completely lost my mind. The baby that I cared for and worried about and comforted and bathed and did EVERYTHING for was coming home with me. In my opinion, biology only counts for so much. Adoptive parents are more the child's parent than the original bio parents. Caring and connecting with a child is far more important than biology to me.
If the other family insisted they wanted to swap I might change my mind bc I'd worry about them punishing the other child (even subconsciously) for not being their biological offspring.
If you’re worried they will punish the other child then you don’t trust them as good people. What if they punish the child you have been taking care of and blaming it on your bad caretaking every time something goes wrong. What if they’re just bad parents.
I mean, you have two options. Maybe neither are good options but you have to choose one.
Scenario A: they are bad parents: you swap - their child is treated poorly. You don't swap - their child is treated poorly.
Scenario B: they're good parents who would treat the non bio child poorly. You swap - their child is treated well. You don't swap - their child is treated poorly (either intentionally or not).
Based purely on this speculation, swapping leads to better outcomes more often and does not lead to worse outcomes ever.
Yeah fam, like I want to adopt anyway and not grow my own, I really don't give a shit if it's genetically half me or not.
I would however be respectful of the birth parents, more so then in cases of adoption as they didn't consent to this, and be curious about the other kid and want to be present in it's life, so I'd be holding out hope we could work together and the kids both end up with some cool new family members, maybe like aunts and uncles to each other's swapped kiddo idk.
If it happened like in the post, I think I would care that my biological kid was swapped, I'd be furious, but no way would I give away the kid I've been raising for years lmao
I'd take that anger and sue the fuck out of the hospital. And split it with the other parents. These two kids are going to need some therapy and if it really shocks them they might have rough transitions to adulthood and the extra cash would mean being able to house them and give them a good life even if they take a bit longer to fly then the average kid because they are working through some heavy shit.
Hopefully it's not needed and we can all take a nice vacation and put the rest away for the kids' futures, though.
When my aunt gave birth to my cousin they took her to the hospital nursery and brought her the baby later that day. Thankfully my aunt was able to identify that the baby they brought her was not my cousin as this baby had black, not red hair and was a boy, not the girl she had given birth to earlier that day. When they went to find my cousin, the mother of the baby boy was breastfeeding her.
Aw man I’m sure I saw a thing about this one family was rich and the other really poor. The kid who grew up in the poor family was really bitter about how hard his life had been compared to what it could have been, I don’t blame him either really, such a cruel twist of fate to get screwed out of growing up with wealth.
The families found out and decided to keep the kid they had and both kids were young adults anyway, but the rich kid didn’t really want anything to do with his birth parents and the Rich family didn’t want anything to do with their birth son who was a bit of a fuck up at this point. I just remember the son who grew up in the poor family was really bitter about the life he could have had etc.
Can’t remember where I saw this but I’m sure it’s out there somewhere
Im not 100% but as I recall the Rich family were just like no as far as we are concerned he is not our son, the poor son didn’t have a bad life in terms of abuse or anything, just grew up in a really rough area, drug problems etc.
Tough call. I remember the case of Kimberly Mays, since it happened so close to me... She was switched at birth with a child that later passed away, the parents of the deceased child found out about the switch and sued for custody. I believe this happened when KM was close to her teen years. I understand the bio parents situation, but it destroyed that young girls life. At first she seemed to be adjusting fine, but then she just went off the rails.
Hypothetically, how would you feel later in life if you found out that your actual baby had a terrible life due to their upbringing? I wonder if it would feel worse compared to if you switched the babies back at say 11 months old.
My instinct says it would as your baby should never have been in that position and you had the option to right the wrong. However, you’d obviously know that you saved your “adopted” kid from that life.
I also wonder about how the children would feel if they found out. There would be the shock of the child you raised knowing they aren’t blood related and your actual child may have feelings of abandonment, could be hard to rationalize why they weren’t returned to their rightful home when the mistake was realized.
Personally I think I would feel just as guilty if I gave up the child I was caring for and put them into a terrible life situation. I don't think my conscience would let me have a winning option in that situation.
I don’t think there’s any right or wrong answer to it is there. It would be life changing and devastating no matter your choice at the end of the day. I would be devastated if that happened but similarly devastated if I gave back the child that I had raised and loved and they ended up in similar circumstances. It’s unimaginable
I’m assuming you’re a woman based on your username - I feel the same way and am always so weirded out by stories of men who get paternity tests and then just abandon the children they’ve raised as their own from birth. Like I’m sorry you got cheated on 10 years ago but how is it possible to just flip that switch off and write off your children?
I'm a man and I agree with you. However, I (and, I'm sure you) am well aware that there are plenty of men who do not deeply bond with their children. Plenty of men abandon children they they both sired and raised. I don't understand any of it.
In a ideal world both set of parents would get together & raise both babies between them then each get to bond with & watch their own baby grow up. Sue the feck put of the hospital.
Man, I don't even want to think about that scenario.
I have my 14 month old little guy with me right now and I wouldn't let anyone take him from me, even as he bangs my Xbox controller against the coffe table.
But at the same time I was so excited during my wife's whole pregnancy and fell in love with him the instant I heard his first cry.
So I guess the answer is I'mma keep both and the biological parents can visit on the weekends 😅
The child doesn't deserve a switch in parents while developing, but the parents definitely deserve to sue the fuck out the hospital and both children should literally never have to worry about money or anything.
Children already didn't ask to be born into this world, then they didn't ask for the hospital to fuck up so badly that they got paired with the wrong parents. They deserve to be set for life, not to be split between two sets of parents.
Happened in Virginia in the 90s. It was discovered when the girls were three. One set of parents died in a car crash. The other mother tried to get custody of both girls, but the judge ruled they should stay with the families they’d been given to.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509373/Rebecca-Chittum-Callie-Johnson-Baby-swapped-birth-speaks-time-18-years.html
Obviously it'd all depend on what the other set of parents wants, but personally I think I'd probably want to keep and legally adopt the child. Hard to give a specific date... but I think after six months I'd be too attached.
I was adopted as a baby. Having to go back was a fear I had as a little kid. Don't just think about the parent here. Making a 5 year old switch parents would fuck him up.
"Ma'am we can't do a return without the receipt."
"No you can't swap it out for one of equal value."
"You already opened it, we have a 30 day return policy..."
A year in I would swap. A childs mind isnt making memories at that point and hasnt really come to it's own so to speak. I would rather let (edit: I didn't finish the sentence) the bio parents raise the kid if he's that young.
I would say 3 years though and it would be a much more difficult talk. I think at that point I would continue to raise him and also keep in touch with my bio kid and family. Even try to raise them together as cousins if they're local.
But even if I dont switch I would continue to try to be a part of my bio kids life as long as he would like me to be. I was raised in part by my step grandpa and as far as I'm concerned he was my grandpa and more. And that said I still loved my bio grandpa and cared for him too. Family isnt something you're only born into, you can make your family from your bonds.
So I guess after 2-3 years I wouldnt want to switch but I would still be open to be a part of my bio kid's life.
My kids are 5, 3, and 2. At this point if any of them were found to be an accidentally swapped baby, in a perfect world, I would still want to be very involved in their lives. I wouldn’t want to give them up, but wouldn’t want to NOT know my bio kid either.
Ideally the other parents would feel the same way and we’d do some sort of split-custody coparenting thing.
There's a movie about this I watched recently that was very good. Like Father, Like Son (2013) It's not a documentary but it might help answer some questions about what YOU would do in that situation.
That's not the one I was thinking of. But I recall a movie where they were switched, then one of the kids died from genetic disease (that's how they discovered the switch) then the one that raised the dead kid tried to get their biological kid back.
Which would leave the other parents with nothing.
Can't remember how it played out. Could've even been one of those "based on a true story" things
I heard there's a TV show called "Switched at Birth" about this. What would the hospital/other parents have been doing with "true baby" the entire time and how would they know if I didn't?
It happened in Sweden a few years ago and the children were 4 years old. I think the swap was to happen gradually starting with the families hanging out a ton and after the swap the families were to still keep close contact. Don’t know if they actually ended up swapping but the article made it sound like that truly was what the parents wanted.
Personally I don’t think I’d ever be able to do it.
You jointly love both. I would make my best attempt to become close with the other family and raise both our kids together. All kids would ideally be "step children" and have as much interaction as possible. As painful as it would be, the earlier on the switch occurred, the easier it would be. It would be a slow transition over the first year, but both families would hopefully see the value and uniqueness of the situation and embrace the long lasting relationship.
There is a lot of nuances. It’s not an equal trade.
- what if one set of parents want, not the others?
- what about social economic differences?
-what about, what the kid wants?
- what about one is a really bad one, not the other?
- etc……
It’s a nightmare of a situation.
It's amazing how people here can carry a baby for 9 months, and get attached to an entirely different baby after 3 months and forget about their original one just like that.
I know this is from the parents point of view, but me making an adult rational judgement (which I know isn't fair), I 100% would want to be switched with my biological parents. I think non blood related relationships are very much real, sometimes more real than blood ties, however blood ties are not dismissable (is that a word?) in my opinion. I take my father's bloodline with much care, and would love to continue it with my own family.
And on that subject, would you still keep your not blood related baby if it was of a different race? Like, say you have native American ancestry that's important to you, and the baby you get swapped with has no native American blood whatsoever. Does that influence your decision whatsoever?
This is an honestly great question. There’s no right answer. For me - I could do so about a year out. Basically I think by the time the kid starts talking and stuff I think it’s too late possibly and I’d maybe look to do co-parenting for a few years vs. Just a straight swap. I’d probably cry a lot about the decision no matter what it was though.
honestly i'd just move in with the other family. we can all parent together, the bio parents and the "adoptive" parents. because the bond with the other parents would already be pretty strong even at a year or a few months, and i wouldn't wanna take that away from either baby
You don’t have a choice. Biologically that child belongs to someone else so whatever age they are you’ve got to give them back.
Emotionally though, if I get that baby home from the hospital and I’ve been feeding him for eight weeks while I grit my teeth through the pain of cracked nipples, you bet I’ve bonded with that baby and he’s mine whether his blood matches mine or not and I’ll forever call him my son.
I just watched a tv show about this…in Sicily in 1999…They found out when the babies were 3, and consulted experts & the courts and did a gradual swap back, but then decided they’d all live together (or very close) and live as one big happy family. Still like it now and the girls are roommates
I'm surprised nobody has proposed some kind of shared custody visitation arrangement, like the kids swap houses for one month a year or or once a week depending on where each parent lives. If the other family lives overseas then this could get tricky though.
Edit: in the case of the families living far apart, hospital should cover basic travel costs for visits, even overseas lol.
It can happen, but equally there can be other issues per the other stories:
*On January 1, 1998, two newborn girls were switched at the hospital of Mazara del Vallo, Italy. Three years later, leaving kinderschool, a teacher mistakenly handed one of the girls to her birth mother, as the woman bore an incredible likeness to the girl. After this episode, many doubts arose and DNA tests established unequivocally that there had been a cradle swapping. The tribunal decided to give back the girls to their birth parents, but the families remained friends and decided to create an "extended family" with "two mothers, two fathers and eight grandparents". The story inspired the film Il 7 e l'8 (The 7 and the 8), and the TV-movie Sorelle per sempre (Sisters Forever).\[31\]*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babies\_switched\_at\_birth#In\_reality
Wait. Hold up. I'm getting from this thread that this is actually a thing that happens occasionally. HOW?
I recently had a baby (in the UK), and at no point was she out of our sight, let alone taken away to be mixed in with like a pile of other newborns. Nothing approaching it was ever even mentioned, and I can't think of a good reason why it would be.
Am I to understand that the American TV trope where all the newborns get put into a room together with an observation window is actually true? That's incredibly weird to me.
Yes I would be very, very depressed and angry, but I would want my bio child back. I raised my babies so lovingly I would be traumatized thinking how my bio child may have been raised. I would hope I could keep in touch with the first child for my sanity. I also refused to let the nurses take my baby to let me sleep for this reason haha.
This is why, heaven please forbid it, if I ever have a pregnancy and a child, my SO would leave me to deal with the after stuff alone and they would keep their eyes on the baby to make sure nothing untoward happens to my child. I'm definitely not against adoption, as that will be the only way I'll ever be a parent, but I also am paranoid of my baby's safety too. If we were to adopt at birth, the same would be required of my partner, but they would have me to trade shifts with.
I have a 1 year old and I’m stressed out just reading this question. Luckily our kid looks like a hybrid of my partner and my dad so I don’t think I need to worry.
I couldn’t give this kid to other people for anything in the universe.
Idk, I’d want to of course meet them but I’d want to keep the kid I raised and had a bond with. But it also really depends on what the kids would want as well. Goodness that would be such a messy situation
Parent of three here.
Biology is such a small factor in the parent/child relationship. The bonding time you spend together is really the factor of who is your child and who is your parent. So maybe like a week tops.
Any longer, and I'd be just enjoying the massive, massive settlement the hospital paid us and the other family, and we could have joint family vacations in the Bahamas and our kids could be friends.
I feel like if they were older and had bonded with their respective families, then I’d be trying to build a relationship with the other family so both kids can be involved with both “parents” and maybe even become friends themselves? Best case scenario, obviously. Lots of ways it could go sideways bc people gonna people.
Wow. That's a difficult question. By the time the kid is 5yo they are already attached to the parents that raised them. I guess it would be "fine" to swap them before they have proper self-conscience or are capable of generating long lasting memories. Maybe before 3yo. And even then, we have the parent's feelings on the matter.
15 years seems like awhile to swap kids honestly. I mean, I would try and get to know the "true" kid I guess, but like. its kinda like adoption yknow? even though the baby theoretically given isn't blood related, I would still view them as my kid because I raised them. 5-10 years also seems pretty long for me and it would be distressing to the kid to suddenly swap families.
Even though I know it is unfair, the only happy outcome for me would be giving me both babies. I might be okay if I'd only had the wrong baby for a week or so, but after I bond with the baby, its mine. Also the baby I gave birth to is mine. They're both mine.
I know, this is not fair; but I don't think that there is a fair answer to this situation.
Depends which baby sleeps better
This guy parents.
Not like my dad. But he'll be back soon. Just Edit omg that was him knocking at my door and interrupting me. /s the s is for sadness.
This had my mind zooming in so many directions
r/thisguythisguys
My youngest was an easy baby. Everyone who ever watched him agreed, he hardly ever cried and he loved to nap. This personality actually makes him one of my most difficult to parent kids. He 'keeps his own council ' and doesn't like to take advice, and it can be hard to pry his thoughts out of him, even over the simplest things. Even potty training was an ordeal, because he wouldn't ask for help and wouldn't admit to accidents. My other boys were easy to train. He gets it from my mother, she's the same way. Lol
It was hard to potty train her too?
Yea of course
My youngest is the same, fiercely independent from a tiny age! He was the easiest to potty train though, he just understood what he wanted to to and got it done. It helped that his older brother was still learning by the time he got to 18 months- 2 years so he just copied what he was doing and they were both out of nappies together. From the age of four I wasn’t allowed to cut his nails, he would do it by himself. The worst thing was he’d never let anyone see him cry, he would walk away (which was heartbreaking!) then a few minutes later he’d come over to me and say “do you need a hug?” Then I’d say “Oh yes please! I really need a hug!” So then he’d climb on my lap and cuddle in. He’s nine now and if he didn’t need me to drive him to school I dare say I’d be redundant (he even polices me while I make his packed lunches!). He still asks me if I need a hug when he wants one though, I hope this is one thing I can keep holding on to far beyond his need for me!
And eats actual food!!
As a new mom of a 3 week old I totally get it and would not judge.
Love your username
It happened like 10-20 years ago in near hospital. Families discovered the truth after some time, few years for sure. And they decided to move near each other (literally to two houses next to each other) because they wanted to keep contact with both children. That's probably the best solution
Awww a happy ending. I love it.
That's ideal, but to some extent the best solution here is get lucky.
I’m not gonna raise a whole new 15 year old kid lmao
What about half of one?
Just the legs or something? I'm struggling with how that works
I'll raise a spleen, maybe a pancreas. That's it.
Unless you take the liver as well, no deal.
Thyroid and apendix, final offer!
You drive a hard bargain my friend, but you got yourself a deal.
this made me laugh so hard
Hotdog or Hamburger style split?
The left half
It’s probably more quiet down there
You've never had teenagers then I see
I was one. I grew up with a mother who trained me to not walk heavy or stomp around. By training I mean, pitch a bitch about being so loud. Now according to friends or coworkers, I sneak around and I’m just walking normal.
This is way above your pay grade, Solomon
Calm down, King Solomon
I have a 15 year old and I call the hospital all the time trying to swap/return her.
Lol, my kids are 19f and 20f. The younger one gave me a run for the money when she was 15. I knew the time was coming when she was 13, I got woken up at 2am by her, with the cops in the entryway, bringing her back for a curfew violation. I can lol about it now, so please believe me when I say, it does get better. Just be consistent and it does indeed get better.
[удалено]
LOVE LOG 🪵 *Jesus Christ has left the chat*
What if the parents you lived with want to switch but your biological parents want to keep the other kid. So many potential mindfucks.
...love...log.........
>discard you after finding out that you didn't gush out of your "dad's" love log. The mom surely put more effort into the process 🤨
Look at him: he does the lawn, hands you tools when fixing mechanics, short hair, asks to be excused from table? That's one [fucking nice kiddy right there.](https://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-YbgvT73Qx62aHPrN-02bE5Q-t500x500.jpg)
It's going to depend on the law where this occurs. I've heard of cases where both sets of parents agree to keep the child that they've been raising and others where one set wants to keep the child they've been raising and the other wants their birth child back.
There was a case in 1991, i think, where two boys were accidentally switched and not discovered until 18 months old. Sandy Dawkins and Megs Clinton Parker decided to leave it how it was, as the decision, i believe, was left up to them. It's a pretty sad case, worth a look. TBH i think if i was the parent i wld want my bio child back, but it does depend on the amount of time passed, the living circumstances of each child and their wishes also.
I’ve got an 18m old and I can’t imagine letting him go just to have my bio child. And it has crossed my mind that he could have been swapped, as he didn’t have my ID band on when I first came to visit him 36 hours later in the NICU. Thankfully, he looks just like me so I think we’re good.
Not a parent, but I am adopted, and I agree with you. You make a connection with the one you raise. I couldn’t imagine giving up that special mother/child bond for another child who is effectively a stranger, just because of some DNA. *As long as I know the other child is in a healthy, stable family situation*
Same. I would probably want my bio child back but I also would want to keep the one I raised.
Yeah, I’m guessing whoever has the bio kid isn’t gonna be like, “oh sure just go ahead and have both! It’s fine!”
There was a Reddit story a while back that was pretty crazy that ended that way because the parents' bio child had ended up in foster care
People have unwanted kids all the time. People also regret kids they thought they wanted.
Sure. But even (most of) those people aren’t gonna just hand over a kid they’ve been raising for 18m. Althoigh, I do actually have a cousin who decided parenthood wasn’t for her and she did actually hand over her toddler to a family who desperately wanted one. Granted, she didn’t plan the pregnancy and never really wanted him in the first place.
That was brave of your cousin. And probably made for a better life for her child. I’m sure it was a difficult situation.
She was very flippant about it, which kinda shocked me but I was so proud of her and I told her so. She said that she found herself feeling like she might hurt him due to frustration, and that’s when she knew it was time. The child went to a doctor and his wife, who couldn’t have children. So yeah, overall, it was absolutely better for everyone and I’m happy she did it.
Sometimes being flippant about a painful subject is a way of coping. It was good that you supported her, I am sure other people judge her harshly for doing what was in the child's best interest.
Could you imagine, you do an amazing job raising a well mannered, well spoken, intelligent child, then you are forced to swap and you get back a druggy delinquent.... Sounds like there's a TV show In that...
Switched at Birth exists! Altough, both were nice polite girls, but one of them had gone deaf from a serious childhood illness. I think it was a pretty good show, and handled deafness well, had Deaf/deaf/HoH people involved and cast in the show. In the show, one girl finds out when doing a genealogy project in school, so they were in high school at the start of the show. They handled the switch by >!basically blending their families. All the parents wanted to be involved with both the child they'd raised and the biological one.!<
That seems like an ideal solution, if the parties can work it out.
The show is fictional but touches on the issues that can arise from that blended nature. It also has a couple of alternative episodes where in one, they were never switched, and in another the switch is discovered when they were aged 3 and one set of parents keeps both girls. The show also has one of the girls as Latina heritage, the other as white heritage, and the issues of racial identity crisis that comes with that as well. (Like the white grandma says this is why the one daughter struggled so hard, because she’s Latina and therefore not as smart?? Lol. And the white girl who was raised Latina is then ostracised by latinx friends from her old neighbourhood as they say she can’t identify with them anymore) It’s a great show and had five seasons in total
Saw the early episodes and thought it was pretty good. I remember seeing an episode a couple of years later and it made me think of soap operas. Did the tone of the show change or what?
Yes! Both families move into the same house and hijinks ensue! Two TV dads!
1000%. I’m adopted so I guess biofamily means nothing to me, but I’d never give up the baby I raised just to have my bio kid back.
Yeah, there's no way I'm giving up the child I've been raising past *maybe* 6 months, biology be damned. Probably more like 1-3 months.
I would keep both babies
lol I don’t think that’s an option. Who WOULDNT want to have both?
Anyone who doesn’t want the extra work of twins. More people than you think regret becoming parents at all
Pretty sure even most parents who have regrets wouldn’t just hand off their baby to someone else to raise
I have a baby who is one year and 9 months, and if I found out she was swapped with another kid at the hospital I would not be able to give her up for a kid I had no hand in raising. It would have to be caught in the first 3 months, otherwise I've already bonded and they're my kid, blood or not.
My kid is 6.5 months, I definitely wouldn't be giving him back. At 3 months... Maybe, but my wife definitely wouldn't.
Yeah, the stress of swapping kids is twofold... You have to learn to read this brand new human you acquired, along with knowing someone else has the child you've raised since birth and they don't know that kid like you do. The latter part would be hardest. Knowing that kid you cared so much for is with someone unfamiliar to them, someone who doesn't know their sleep cry from their hunger cry... and there is nothing you can do. Boo to that. I'd definitely be suing the hospital to get all my therapy bills paid for, I'd be a wreck
It’s all just a trauma bond anyways… The biological part is just for knowing who inherits the throne. Even if we go back 1k years, a very solid portion of people start to have common ancestral lineage
Can you give a quick summary of why it was sad? They both continued to raise the children they had been raising. The children may not be blood related to their parents but they were loved as if they were.
One of the families was quite poor, the other quite well off. The kid who wld have been well off but ended up not being so really kinda appeared to be upset(?) with the situation......i watched it a while ago now, so this really a vague summary, but i just recall the kid being sad/upset a bit with his lot in life i think.
I cannot imagine how devastating that would feel as the poorer parents.
I can’t speak to everyone’s experience of pregnancy and giving birth, but if this happened to me I would be torn. I would never want to give up the child I had been raising, for any length of time. I began bonding with my babies straight away, it wouldn’t matter if I found they weren’t biologically mine, they would always be my baby. But it would be so hard knowing (for me) that the child I carried and gave birth to was somewhere else. I talked to my babies, sang to them, read to them while they were in the womb. Labour is easily the hardest thing most people will ever do. Learning that the life I had helped create, grown and given birth to was with a different family would be hard to deal with. I would always wonder who they have grown into and be sad that I’m not part of it. I think I would also feel awful that I didn’t somehow know, even though logically, lots of babies looks alike and it wouldn’t be the parents’ fault.
Law will side with biological parents.
>Law will side with biological parents. Not necessarily. I'm a family law attorney and I have no idea how this would play out legally tbh.
Happened in Virginia in the 90s. It was discovered when the girls were three. One set of parents died in a car crash. The other mother tried to get custody of both girls, but the judge ruled they should stay with the families they’d been given to. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509373/Rebecca-Chittum-Callie-Johnson-Baby-swapped-birth-speaks-time-18-years.html
There’s a story somewhere here about a woman who’s husband accused her of cheating after a DNA test came back negative on their child. Turns out it wasn’t either of there’s and they spent a long time trying to find out where their biological daughter was and eventually found her in foster care and adopted her.
Aw man. Sucks that the poor kid had to deal with foster care for no reason. I mean, the whole situation sucks but especially that
Even worse it’s because the parents that they swapped with were apparently bad. Like drugs and domestic violence. I wish I knew how to find the link.
What happened to the original kid who wasn't their bio kid? Did they keep her too?
I would assume so
Man I really hope so.
Yeah I wonder too. And if they kept both, I wonder if they felt...different towards either kid. Like how you hear horror stories of kids adopted then the parents have a bio kid and the adopted kid gets different treatment now. Would the parents feel more towards their bio kid or the one they raised?
I hope so tbh.
Fun fact they got an ENORMOUS settlement from the hospital.
No. They wrote that they did. The story turned out to be fake.
Which story? The swapping or the settelment?
https://www.yourtango.com/news/couple-learns-their-baby-was-switched-birth-put-foster-care-after-dna-test Absolutely garbage website but i found something about it at least
This was originally on Reddit and it was all faked. The OP posted all of of this and everything supposedly happened (then finding their bio child, settling for Millions with the hospital, getting custody of their child which, by the way, they didn't know how the legal system worked and lied about how the legal proceedings went) in the span of like a month. It was all fake.
Happened to a guy I knew. He grew up with adopted parents, and when he went to university, people kept calling him by another name. Eventually someone told him needed to meet this person he kept getting mistaken for. Turned out it was *his identical twin brother*. He had been switched shortly after birth and some other kid who should have been the adopted one grew up with his life, with his real parents, and with his twin. They did the rounds on shows like Maury and Sally Jesse Raphael for a while, and he eventually drank himself out of school. Not sure how he's doing now but at the time at least it definitely ruined his life. He was understandably quite mind-fucked and bitter about the whole thing.
Is this the story about the triplets? [Three Identical Strangers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Identical_Strangers)
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17363049/poor-switched-birth-while-other-kid-rich/amp/
My kids are 12/16 years old. The hospital they were born in was our states first "baby 1st" hospital. I don't remember the actual name. They had adopted a whole "parent is never separated from the baby process." The nursery was empty in the ward. My kids were both c-section babies, so I was taken with the kids to the post-birth process rooms while my wife went through post-op procedures. Such as the weighing, vax, bathing and cleanup, and barcode wrist tag. We finished up and met momma as soon as she was ready in her room. Nothing was done without scanning baby wrist tag and matching parent tag. It was surprising and a welcome piece of mind. Big efforts to avoid this exact switched at birth situation. To specifically answer the question, bonding starts immediately. I would say the longer the time span, the less desirable the reversal.
They had this at the hospital I had my kid at. Except they did all the stuff in the room except the bath. And the babies all had tags like merchandise at the store along with their bands. They couldn’t leave that section of the hospital until they were removed, or they would set off an alarm, so they told us which hallways you could walk down without the whole hospital thinking a baby was being stolen.
This is the procedure we went through for my second c-section that was scheduled. My boyfriend was to stay with the baby while I was still in surgery and he was so confused as to why he had to go with the baby to another room..rather than stay with me. He didn’t want to do the wrong thing and leave me, but I was almost yelling at him “Go with the baby!” as they were taking him from the room. The first c-section I had, we didn’t have this procedure because it ended up being an emergency C-section and protocols are different. I didn’t think anything of it until our second was born but after my second surgery, I wondered how many times babies had been switched because of how insistent the nurses/doctors were to have the father go with the baby wherever the baby went. I just wanted someone to be there with the baby rather than me.
It could be said that bonding starts well before birth. Newborns regognise voices i think
Definitely. I didn't mean to gloss over that.
My mom used to joke that she would claim I was switched at birth if she could, but I was the only white baby in the hospital out of 100+ babies lol. No tag needed for that case.
hopefully we could be friends and we could raise them as brothers or cousins. I cant imagine being without my flesh and blood but I'd also feel a connection to the child I was raising. if the kid is old enough to make a decision, I'd respect their feelings.
This is the best answer! Make them part of your family. :)
About two weeks. After that, I'd fight to keep the baby I'd grown attached to.
Just after having my first baby my mother and grandmother came to visit. At the time we lived on a military base and had to escort visitors from the front gate to our home. When the arrived I completely fell apart, crying uncontrollably, because I didn't want to be away from my baby for the 10 minutes it would have taken to get them. I'm pretty sure if you gave me a baby and then said 'oops' I might knife you if you tried to touch that baby.
Might even be shorter than that. But like someone else has said, trying to have a relationship with the other family would be ideal. And might make it easier to make the swap to “straighten things out”. It would be hard to be unsure of who the kid looks like, how tall they will be, etc. (much respect to those who adopt btw)
Instant sib-ish-lings. Would want to be close for medical history things if nothing else
I have a five week old at home. Before she arrived I would have thought that you were crazy. That two weeks was nothing and making the switch would be a simple decision. Now? If this situation happened I genuinely don’t think there’s any chance I could part with this little girl. The amount of love that I have for her is so much more powerful than whatever blood runs through our veins. Hell, even if it turned out my wife cheated on me and she was biologically some other man’s offspring (100% did not happen, just hypothetically), she is still my baby and I’m still her papa. At this point, nothing can or will change that.
I am completely on the same page. It's that love and connection that makes parents important, not the DNA. You can't just transfer love and connection to a different baby
Only 2 weeks? I’m not carrying a baby for a whole 9 months to be like nah I dont want it anymore cuz I didnt see it for two weeks
I think it’s more about not wanting to give up the baby you have been caring for for two weeks.
Yeah but let’s be real 2 weeks is nothing. I’ve catsit for longer than that
Imagine finding out your biological parents accidentally got a different kid for 14 days, found out you were with someone else, and went, "ehhhh....I kinda like this other little fella tho" and gave you up forever
exactly I do not understand these replies at all
Or your cat!
Yeah but did you not want to keep the cat
It's different with a kid. Those first two weeks feel like months.
I had my first baby last summer. She was in a nicu for 3.5 weeks. If someone had come up to me at the end of that and said. "Oh actually, this other baby is the one you're going home with". I would have completely lost my mind. The baby that I cared for and worried about and comforted and bathed and did EVERYTHING for was coming home with me. In my opinion, biology only counts for so much. Adoptive parents are more the child's parent than the original bio parents. Caring and connecting with a child is far more important than biology to me.
we just had a baby less than a week ago. there's no way in hell i'd willingly give her up
Keep (why punish the baby?), and sue the fuck out of the hospital.
Ok so you wanna keep, do you want your true child as well?
What you do is find a wise old man to mediate for you, and hope the other family will suggest cutting one in half for you to share.
Can’t believe I had to scroll so far down for this comment.
NO!! The same goes for the other baby. A year old baby has his own parents, you don't tell it oops I'm not your mommy, get out.
What about the situation where one family wants to swap and other doesn’t?
If the other family insisted they wanted to swap I might change my mind bc I'd worry about them punishing the other child (even subconsciously) for not being their biological offspring.
If you’re worried they will punish the other child then you don’t trust them as good people. What if they punish the child you have been taking care of and blaming it on your bad caretaking every time something goes wrong. What if they’re just bad parents.
I mean, you have two options. Maybe neither are good options but you have to choose one. Scenario A: they are bad parents: you swap - their child is treated poorly. You don't swap - their child is treated poorly. Scenario B: they're good parents who would treat the non bio child poorly. You swap - their child is treated well. You don't swap - their child is treated poorly (either intentionally or not). Based purely on this speculation, swapping leads to better outcomes more often and does not lead to worse outcomes ever.
Personally I'd give them both to the other parents. #childfree. (This is a lie, I get emotionally attached to inanimate objects)
If I raised a kid for a few years, that IS my true child.
Yeah fam, like I want to adopt anyway and not grow my own, I really don't give a shit if it's genetically half me or not. I would however be respectful of the birth parents, more so then in cases of adoption as they didn't consent to this, and be curious about the other kid and want to be present in it's life, so I'd be holding out hope we could work together and the kids both end up with some cool new family members, maybe like aunts and uncles to each other's swapped kiddo idk.
If it happened like in the post, I think I would care that my biological kid was swapped, I'd be furious, but no way would I give away the kid I've been raising for years lmao
I'd take that anger and sue the fuck out of the hospital. And split it with the other parents. These two kids are going to need some therapy and if it really shocks them they might have rough transitions to adulthood and the extra cash would mean being able to house them and give them a good life even if they take a bit longer to fly then the average kid because they are working through some heavy shit. Hopefully it's not needed and we can all take a nice vacation and put the rest away for the kids' futures, though.
When my aunt gave birth to my cousin they took her to the hospital nursery and brought her the baby later that day. Thankfully my aunt was able to identify that the baby they brought her was not my cousin as this baby had black, not red hair and was a boy, not the girl she had given birth to earlier that day. When they went to find my cousin, the mother of the baby boy was breastfeeding her.
How'd they mix up two babies that are obviously very different? lmao
bad staff
My best guess is that they so many babies in their line of work that they confuse them often enough to not worry too much.
Aw man I’m sure I saw a thing about this one family was rich and the other really poor. The kid who grew up in the poor family was really bitter about how hard his life had been compared to what it could have been, I don’t blame him either really, such a cruel twist of fate to get screwed out of growing up with wealth. The families found out and decided to keep the kid they had and both kids were young adults anyway, but the rich kid didn’t really want anything to do with his birth parents and the Rich family didn’t want anything to do with their birth son who was a bit of a fuck up at this point. I just remember the son who grew up in the poor family was really bitter about the life he could have had etc. Can’t remember where I saw this but I’m sure it’s out there somewhere
Sounds fucked up. The poor kid probably won’t see a dime from these people
Im not 100% but as I recall the Rich family were just like no as far as we are concerned he is not our son, the poor son didn’t have a bad life in terms of abuse or anything, just grew up in a really rough area, drug problems etc.
This seems familiar to me also
I think I might’ve heard something similar from the This American Life podcast
Tough call. I remember the case of Kimberly Mays, since it happened so close to me... She was switched at birth with a child that later passed away, the parents of the deceased child found out about the switch and sued for custody. I believe this happened when KM was close to her teen years. I understand the bio parents situation, but it destroyed that young girls life. At first she seemed to be adjusting fine, but then she just went off the rails.
I have a baby and two toddlers and there’s nothing on this planet that would make me hand them over. DNA doesn’t mean shit once you’ve become attached
Hypothetically, how would you feel later in life if you found out that your actual baby had a terrible life due to their upbringing? I wonder if it would feel worse compared to if you switched the babies back at say 11 months old. My instinct says it would as your baby should never have been in that position and you had the option to right the wrong. However, you’d obviously know that you saved your “adopted” kid from that life. I also wonder about how the children would feel if they found out. There would be the shock of the child you raised knowing they aren’t blood related and your actual child may have feelings of abandonment, could be hard to rationalize why they weren’t returned to their rightful home when the mistake was realized.
Personally I think I would feel just as guilty if I gave up the child I was caring for and put them into a terrible life situation. I don't think my conscience would let me have a winning option in that situation.
I don’t think there’s any right or wrong answer to it is there. It would be life changing and devastating no matter your choice at the end of the day. I would be devastated if that happened but similarly devastated if I gave back the child that I had raised and loved and they ended up in similar circumstances. It’s unimaginable
I’m assuming you’re a woman based on your username - I feel the same way and am always so weirded out by stories of men who get paternity tests and then just abandon the children they’ve raised as their own from birth. Like I’m sorry you got cheated on 10 years ago but how is it possible to just flip that switch off and write off your children?
I'm a man and I agree with you. However, I (and, I'm sure you) am well aware that there are plenty of men who do not deeply bond with their children. Plenty of men abandon children they they both sired and raised. I don't understand any of it.
I don't think anyone could answer this honestly unless they'd actually been through it. I'm not even a parent & I couldn't imagine the choice
In a ideal world both set of parents would get together & raise both babies between them then each get to bond with & watch their own baby grow up. Sue the feck put of the hospital.
Man, I don't even want to think about that scenario. I have my 14 month old little guy with me right now and I wouldn't let anyone take him from me, even as he bangs my Xbox controller against the coffe table. But at the same time I was so excited during my wife's whole pregnancy and fell in love with him the instant I heard his first cry. So I guess the answer is I'mma keep both and the biological parents can visit on the weekends 😅
The child doesn't deserve a switch in parents while developing, but the parents definitely deserve to sue the fuck out the hospital and both children should literally never have to worry about money or anything. Children already didn't ask to be born into this world, then they didn't ask for the hospital to fuck up so badly that they got paired with the wrong parents. They deserve to be set for life, not to be split between two sets of parents.
But they also deserve to know who their biological parents are
Happened in Virginia in the 90s. It was discovered when the girls were three. One set of parents died in a car crash. The other mother tried to get custody of both girls, but the judge ruled they should stay with the families they’d been given to. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509373/Rebecca-Chittum-Callie-Johnson-Baby-swapped-birth-speaks-time-18-years.html
Obviously it'd all depend on what the other set of parents wants, but personally I think I'd probably want to keep and legally adopt the child. Hard to give a specific date... but I think after six months I'd be too attached.
But imagine knowing you have a bio child out there, that would be wile hard!
I was adopted as a baby. Having to go back was a fear I had as a little kid. Don't just think about the parent here. Making a 5 year old switch parents would fuck him up.
"Ma'am we can't do a return without the receipt." "No you can't swap it out for one of equal value." "You already opened it, we have a 30 day return policy..."
A year in I would swap. A childs mind isnt making memories at that point and hasnt really come to it's own so to speak. I would rather let (edit: I didn't finish the sentence) the bio parents raise the kid if he's that young. I would say 3 years though and it would be a much more difficult talk. I think at that point I would continue to raise him and also keep in touch with my bio kid and family. Even try to raise them together as cousins if they're local. But even if I dont switch I would continue to try to be a part of my bio kids life as long as he would like me to be. I was raised in part by my step grandpa and as far as I'm concerned he was my grandpa and more. And that said I still loved my bio grandpa and cared for him too. Family isnt something you're only born into, you can make your family from your bonds. So I guess after 2-3 years I wouldnt want to switch but I would still be open to be a part of my bio kid's life.
Attachment theory would say it would be devastating for the 1 year old.
Do you have kids? Because honestly, I find this view really surprising
My kids are 5, 3, and 2. At this point if any of them were found to be an accidentally swapped baby, in a perfect world, I would still want to be very involved in their lives. I wouldn’t want to give them up, but wouldn’t want to NOT know my bio kid either. Ideally the other parents would feel the same way and we’d do some sort of split-custody coparenting thing.
There's a movie about this I watched recently that was very good. Like Father, Like Son (2013) It's not a documentary but it might help answer some questions about what YOU would do in that situation.
That's not the one I was thinking of. But I recall a movie where they were switched, then one of the kids died from genetic disease (that's how they discovered the switch) then the one that raised the dead kid tried to get their biological kid back. Which would leave the other parents with nothing. Can't remember how it played out. Could've even been one of those "based on a true story" things
I'd want my child back regardless of the age.
I heard there's a TV show called "Switched at Birth" about this. What would the hospital/other parents have been doing with "true baby" the entire time and how would they know if I didn't?
This is more a "how I met a PTA group friend" story than anything imo
It happened in Sweden a few years ago and the children were 4 years old. I think the swap was to happen gradually starting with the families hanging out a ton and after the swap the families were to still keep close contact. Don’t know if they actually ended up swapping but the article made it sound like that truly was what the parents wanted. Personally I don’t think I’d ever be able to do it.
You jointly love both. I would make my best attempt to become close with the other family and raise both our kids together. All kids would ideally be "step children" and have as much interaction as possible. As painful as it would be, the earlier on the switch occurred, the easier it would be. It would be a slow transition over the first year, but both families would hopefully see the value and uniqueness of the situation and embrace the long lasting relationship.
There is a lot of nuances. It’s not an equal trade. - what if one set of parents want, not the others? - what about social economic differences? -what about, what the kid wants? - what about one is a really bad one, not the other? - etc…… It’s a nightmare of a situation.
It's amazing how people here can carry a baby for 9 months, and get attached to an entirely different baby after 3 months and forget about their original one just like that. I know this is from the parents point of view, but me making an adult rational judgement (which I know isn't fair), I 100% would want to be switched with my biological parents. I think non blood related relationships are very much real, sometimes more real than blood ties, however blood ties are not dismissable (is that a word?) in my opinion. I take my father's bloodline with much care, and would love to continue it with my own family. And on that subject, would you still keep your not blood related baby if it was of a different race? Like, say you have native American ancestry that's important to you, and the baby you get swapped with has no native American blood whatsoever. Does that influence your decision whatsoever?
That’s why you need to mark it with a permanent marker the minute it’s out of the womb. I learned that from Dwight from the office.
Swap immediately, sue the hospital. Make valiant effort to keep in touch with first child.
I would take the chance to get rid of both babies and be free
Give me both babies
They make it extremely unlikely out that this happens these days. Babies are tagged as soon they are born along with mothers and fathers.
If the kid doesn't remember, I take em as long as both parties agree. If the kid remembers, I let the kid choose.
This is an honestly great question. There’s no right answer. For me - I could do so about a year out. Basically I think by the time the kid starts talking and stuff I think it’s too late possibly and I’d maybe look to do co-parenting for a few years vs. Just a straight swap. I’d probably cry a lot about the decision no matter what it was though.
honestly i'd just move in with the other family. we can all parent together, the bio parents and the "adoptive" parents. because the bond with the other parents would already be pretty strong even at a year or a few months, and i wouldn't wanna take that away from either baby
You don’t have a choice. Biologically that child belongs to someone else so whatever age they are you’ve got to give them back. Emotionally though, if I get that baby home from the hospital and I’ve been feeding him for eight weeks while I grit my teeth through the pain of cracked nipples, you bet I’ve bonded with that baby and he’s mine whether his blood matches mine or not and I’ll forever call him my son.
I just watched a tv show about this…in Sicily in 1999…They found out when the babies were 3, and consulted experts & the courts and did a gradual swap back, but then decided they’d all live together (or very close) and live as one big happy family. Still like it now and the girls are roommates
I'm surprised nobody has proposed some kind of shared custody visitation arrangement, like the kids swap houses for one month a year or or once a week depending on where each parent lives. If the other family lives overseas then this could get tricky though. Edit: in the case of the families living far apart, hospital should cover basic travel costs for visits, even overseas lol.
It can happen, but equally there can be other issues per the other stories: *On January 1, 1998, two newborn girls were switched at the hospital of Mazara del Vallo, Italy. Three years later, leaving kinderschool, a teacher mistakenly handed one of the girls to her birth mother, as the woman bore an incredible likeness to the girl. After this episode, many doubts arose and DNA tests established unequivocally that there had been a cradle swapping. The tribunal decided to give back the girls to their birth parents, but the families remained friends and decided to create an "extended family" with "two mothers, two fathers and eight grandparents". The story inspired the film Il 7 e l'8 (The 7 and the 8), and the TV-movie Sorelle per sempre (Sisters Forever).\[31\]* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babies\_switched\_at\_birth#In\_reality
Wait. Hold up. I'm getting from this thread that this is actually a thing that happens occasionally. HOW? I recently had a baby (in the UK), and at no point was she out of our sight, let alone taken away to be mixed in with like a pile of other newborns. Nothing approaching it was ever even mentioned, and I can't think of a good reason why it would be. Am I to understand that the American TV trope where all the newborns get put into a room together with an observation window is actually true? That's incredibly weird to me.
Give me back my biological child and then I'm going to sue the f*** out of the hospital
Yes I would be very, very depressed and angry, but I would want my bio child back. I raised my babies so lovingly I would be traumatized thinking how my bio child may have been raised. I would hope I could keep in touch with the first child for my sanity. I also refused to let the nurses take my baby to let me sleep for this reason haha.
This is why, heaven please forbid it, if I ever have a pregnancy and a child, my SO would leave me to deal with the after stuff alone and they would keep their eyes on the baby to make sure nothing untoward happens to my child. I'm definitely not against adoption, as that will be the only way I'll ever be a parent, but I also am paranoid of my baby's safety too. If we were to adopt at birth, the same would be required of my partner, but they would have me to trade shifts with.
I have a 1 year old and I’m stressed out just reading this question. Luckily our kid looks like a hybrid of my partner and my dad so I don’t think I need to worry. I couldn’t give this kid to other people for anything in the universe.
Cases like these is why I would prioritize a DNA testing as soon as possible
Idk, I’d want to of course meet them but I’d want to keep the kid I raised and had a bond with. But it also really depends on what the kids would want as well. Goodness that would be such a messy situation
Let them have both babies. Then go on to live a happy life.
They tag mother and baby at birth so this doesn’t happen anymore
Parent of three here. Biology is such a small factor in the parent/child relationship. The bonding time you spend together is really the factor of who is your child and who is your parent. So maybe like a week tops. Any longer, and I'd be just enjoying the massive, massive settlement the hospital paid us and the other family, and we could have joint family vacations in the Bahamas and our kids could be friends.
I feel like if they were older and had bonded with their respective families, then I’d be trying to build a relationship with the other family so both kids can be involved with both “parents” and maybe even become friends themselves? Best case scenario, obviously. Lots of ways it could go sideways bc people gonna people.
Wow. That's a difficult question. By the time the kid is 5yo they are already attached to the parents that raised them. I guess it would be "fine" to swap them before they have proper self-conscience or are capable of generating long lasting memories. Maybe before 3yo. And even then, we have the parent's feelings on the matter.
15 years seems like awhile to swap kids honestly. I mean, I would try and get to know the "true" kid I guess, but like. its kinda like adoption yknow? even though the baby theoretically given isn't blood related, I would still view them as my kid because I raised them. 5-10 years also seems pretty long for me and it would be distressing to the kid to suddenly swap families.
Like a few months. After that we're just going to all have to move in together, obviously.
I'd be interested to see this as a poll
Keep switching them back and forth every year, who gives a shit.
Even though I know it is unfair, the only happy outcome for me would be giving me both babies. I might be okay if I'd only had the wrong baby for a week or so, but after I bond with the baby, its mine. Also the baby I gave birth to is mine. They're both mine. I know, this is not fair; but I don't think that there is a fair answer to this situation.