Switched at birth
Can anyone make sense of this story?
I know it’s about two babies switched at birth. I know there was a controversial court case and a custody battle. And I know everybody’s happy now, eighteen years later.
But the rest of it is just too Byzantine to follow. As one of the commenters to the article wrote:
In order for me to completely understand this story, I’m going to have to draw stick figures with little kids and moms and dads. And aunts. And someone who fell in love with someone else. Never mind.
I thought about diagrams and a chart, too. But then I just gave up.
And turned to this. Security has gotten a lot tighter at hospitals since I gave birth many moons ago. I had what was called “rooming in,” though, and only stayed in the hospital one night, so my baby was pretty much with me the whole time.
Stop me before I tell you my labor story.
You can tell your, if I can tell mine. oh, my wife was involved, too, somehow. It’s MY knee that still predicts cold fronts, though.
Ach, hit “Submit” when I meant to do “Preview”. Punctuation errors included, gratis.
Yes, confusing. Here’s my understanding:
Not long after the discovery of the switch, one set of parents died. Their non-biological daughter Callie was then raised by her (non-bio) aunt, Pam.
Pam got to know the other set of parents, the Chittums, who were raising her biological niece, Rebecca during visits.
Pam and Kevin Chittum fell in love, married, and have had 3 more children. Thus Callie was raised by her non-bio aunt Pam and bio dad Kevin.
Should have added that given the circumstances makes sense that both girls were happy remaining with their non-bio parents.
Rebecca stayed with the woman who had been “mom” since birth because she never had the opportunity to know her bio parents.
Callie stayed with Pam and eventually acquired her bio dad as her legal dad while maintaining her since-birth family relationships with Pam and grandparents.
I recall being ‘banded’ – my daughter and I had identifying wrist bracelets with matching numbers applied before or shortly after the umbilical cord was cut in the delivery room. Either way – before either of us left the room; daughter being a mere infant and me drugged to the gills. Then, as part of the hospital check-out procedure, I was asked to look at our bracelets and affirm that the numbers on them matched. I can only assume that this kind of precaution had been put in place because of this kind of awful mix-up. That seems to have been practice in military hospitals c. 1980, can’t see how it could have been overlooked in a civvy hospital.