My heart broke last Wednesday night as I watched 2 moms on Private Practice have to switch babies after a father exchanged them and their records not long after birth.
I thought about it for days after wondering if it really ever happens anymore and what I would do If my son wasn’t my baby.
I guess it does because a pair of moms in the Czech Republic have a few sad months ahead of them after finding out that the baby that each has been nurturing for the last 10 months is not their biological child.
Last December, Jaroslava Trojanova and Jaroslava Cermakova each gave birth to a baby girl at Trebic hospital 18 minutes apart.
Everything was fine until the babies were weighed the second day and one had gained 1.65 lbs and the other had lost 1.65 lbs. Staff on duty at the time reassured them that the babies’ weights on the day they had been born had been recorded wrongly.
Libor, Jaroslava Trojanova’s husband became suspicious after his friends made comments about the baby being blonde-haired, blue-eyed even though he and wife were both dark-haired and brown-eyed.
He secretly decided to have a DNA test done over the Internet which revealed that he was not Nikola’s father. When Jaroslava insisted he must be the father she too had a DNA test done – which revealed that the child was not theirs.
Two weeks after receiving the DNA tests the couple discovered that their real daughter Veronika was living with Jaroslava Cermakova and her husband Jan in a village 20 miles away.
As expected, both families were devastated.
“I just cried for two hours solid and Jaroslava was inconsolable; it was just impossible to believe that this could happen,” Libor, said.
“We have raised Nikola for the past 10 months. She’s a beautiful little girl who’s always smiling and it’s impossible to imagine her now living apart from us.
“We have missed so many milestones in Veronika’s life; her first teeth and her first steps. Now we are determined not to miss her first birthday and her first Christmas,” said Libor.
“The whole situation is just awful. What can I say? You love your daughter, but, at the end of the day, she is not yours. Nikola is my little angel and so far I don’t have any feelings for Veronika – I wish I could live with both of them,” said Jaroslava, 25, who is still breastfeeding her.
Libor said the couples now each planned to sue the hospital involved for the equivalent of £250,000.
Trebic Hospital near Brno on the Czech-Austrian border has so far declined to comment publicly while an investigation was ongoing. Hospital director Petr Mayer this week delivered a written apology to the couples.
Libor added: “The Cermakova family are such nice people thankfully and we will support each other and get through this together. I am determined to have my real daughter back but it is such a difficult complicated process.
“We have to take it slowly and carefully. Jaroslava is taking it very badly. At the meeting with the Cermakova family she ran away and locked herself in the toilet for a long time, she couldn’t face it. Her nerves are bad.”
I cannot even start to imagine what these families are going through. They have planned to spend more time together to get acquainted to the proper child. They will hopefully switch Nikola and Veronika back to their proper families just before their first birthdays which will be on December 9th.
I am not sure that I would be able to give back a baby that I have loved as my own for a full year. The strength that these women have is commendable. We wish them the best. I am sure we will have an update in a month or two. SOURCE
*photo – On the left, Veronika is held by her real mother Jaroslava Trojanova, while on the right Nikola is held by HER real mother Jaroslava Cermakova.
