Gavin (top left) went home with Megs (bottom right). Robyn (top right) went home with Sandy (bottom left.)
Can you even imagine? A mother gives birth to a baby boy and takes him home. She breastfeeds him, takes care of him, loves him. And then one day she learns that baby is not her own.
That’s exactly what happened to South Africa’s Sandy Dawkins and Megs Clinton Parker.
It was 23 years ago when the error occurred. Sandy and Megs both gave birth at the Nigel Hospital. They were the only women who had babies that day. And somehow, accidentally, the babies were given to the wrong mother.
Robyn went home with Sandy – a poor, single mother “struggling to make ends meet”. Gavin went home with Megs, who lived a wealthier, more secure lifestyle.
The mistake wasn’t realised until the boys were 18 months old and a paternity test showed Gavin wasn’t Megs’ son.
At that point, the mothers could have swapped their sons. But they didn’t.
Last night the story of Sandy, Megs, Robyn and Gavin featured on Channel 9′s 60 Minutes. Journalists Peter Overton told the story of the impossible decision Sandy and Megs were forced to make. Do you take the child you love or the one your gave birth to?
Megs Clinton Parker
PETER OVERTON: So, the mothers were confronted by the impossible choice between the little boys they loved, or the babies they had given birth to. They decided not to swap the boys back – a heartbreaking decision that troubles them to this day.
PETER OVERTON: Should you have swapped the boys back, as you look back?
SANDY: In retrospect, yes. Because in time to avoid them getting hurt – in time to avoid a lot of people getting hurt. We’ve actually – I personally feel we’ve done a lot more damage.
PETER OVERTON: It would have been easier to say Megs, here’s Robyn.
SANDY: Yeah.
PETER OVERTON: I’ll take Gavin.
SANDY: The heartbreak would have been unbelievable, but I think there would have been a lot less damage done.
The damage Sandy is referring to is everything that happened since. After the mistake was first discovered, the mothers decided to hold onto the sons they took home from the hospital. Everything seemed to work. The boys spent time together like brothers. Megs and Sandy took to each other like “sisters in arms”.
But as the time went by, and the reality of what could have been for each of the families began to take effect.
Gavin and Robyn in 2005.
PETER OVERTON: But by the time Robyn was 15, when I first met him, the grim realities of his meagre life with Sandy were hitting home.
ROBYN: It is difficult. If I’ve ever wanted anything, I’ve had to work towards it. I’ve never just had it come towards me. I’m not saying I’ve never had anything. What I’m saying was, I’ve – Gavin gets things easy.
PETER OVERTON: The year was 2004. Gavin, living Robyn’s life, was very comfortable with his lot. Would you ever want to go and live with Sandy?
GAVIN: Not really. I’m happy down here.
PETER OVERTON: You are happy with the life you accidentally were given?
GAVIN: Yeah.
PETER OVERTON: Do you feel sorry for Robyn?
GAVIN: Not really.
PETER OVERTON: But Megs felt her biological son was becoming a lost boy – failing hopelessly at school, isolated from his peers, needing to be rescued from his life of disadvantage. So you do see the day that you will get your son back?
Robyn Dawkins today
MEGS: I have to see that day, for that day is not there, then – it has to be there. It’s not negotiable.
PETER OVERTON: You really do miss your boy, don’t you?
MEGS: I do.
PETER OVERTON: And so, at the age of 15, encouraged by Megs, Robyn made the life-changing decision – moving across the country to live with Megs and Gavin.
ROBYN: I mean, I love Sandy, I mean she’s my mum for 15 years. And sort of leaving your mum after 15 years is like, not the easiest thing or decision you are going to make.
PETER OVERTON: She’s been left with nothing.
ROBYN: Yes, got no son.
Today, Sandy has no contact with either of her sons. Robyn and Megs’ relationship has been turbulent at times, but they reconnected recently after Robyn had his own baby.
So should they have swapped? In hindsight, Sandy says yes. But Megs says no.
PETER OVERTON: Should you have swapped the boys back?
MEGS: No. I got – I still think I got the best of both worlds, even with all the drama.
PETER OVERTON: So you still regard yourself as a winner?
MEGS: I don’t think anyone wins.
SANDY: Nobody’s won anything at the end of the day. It’s – we both sitting with absolute chaos on our hands. It’s something that – it’s irreparable. You can never fix it up.
It’s an impossible decision. Do you keep with the baby you know, the one you’ve raised. Or do you take back the baby you should have had all along?
When a similar thing happened in the Czech Republic in 2007, the parents of two baby girls did decide to switch their children. Nikola and Veronika were born at the same hospital in December 2006 and staff now think the switch was accidentally made because their mums had the same name - Jaroslava.
UK press reported:
Switched at birth
Since finding out the truth three weeks ago, the couples feel they have no choice but to swap back. The agony is that after 10 months bonding no one can bear to part with the children they have raised as their own.
All four parents are spending as much time as possible together with the girls. On this, their sixth meeting, the children are already at ease with one another, while the parents – respectful of one another’s raw feelings – are still treading on eggshells.
“It is impossible to tell you how it feels,” says 29-year-old Libor Broza, cradling Nikola who he has brought up for almost a year, in his arms. “It is so terrible that I wouldn’t wish it even on my worst enemy.”
What would you do?
Comments
46 Comments so far
My god. My heart was in my mouth the entire time. I have a ten month old. The devil forbid what Armageddon might unfold should we be faced with such i describable heartbreak.
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I am astonished that they decided not to swap back. Astonished.
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Reading this article and all the comments, all I can think is “I just wouldn’t want to know. Don’t tell me, ever.”
Unfair, selfish, I know. But he’s my little boy, regardless of whose biology he has and I couldn’t bear having him taken from me.
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It nearly happened to us on the day we were bringing our baby boy home from a birthing clinic in Japan. There were actually only a few babies as it’s a small clinic. My husband and I are ethnically Japanese and Chinese, so our baby looks similar as the rest of the babies. We were standing at the side while a nurse changed our boy’s outfit. The atmosphere was pleasant as we were making small talk with the nurse who is always friendly to us. Both my husband and I did notice that our boy looks a bit different. Yet, we’ve been told by our friends that babies grow so fast; they will look different day by day. And there we stood thinking how true it is.
But after a while, I started to realize that he actually looks quite different. I paid a closer attention and then (thank God I did this) checked on his name tag attached to his foot. Much to our horror, it’s another family name which happens to be very similar to ours – leading to the mixed by the nurse (people are addressed by family name here). The nurse was shocked and apologetic and quickly unchanged the mistaken boy, put him back and took our baby in. This time around all of us made sure it’s the right one.
To this day, I still have a goosebump thinking about how close we were to having our baby switched. We talked about it and really just can’t imagine what we would do have that had happened.
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It was heartbreaking to watch. I was adopted at birth and my parents are the wonderful people who raised me. No question about it.
I did meet my biological mother 10 years ago, it was exciting at the start, a new ‘family’ to get to know. But it was hard work, a real effort to be the long lost relative in their family. We have since ceased contact and I’m fine with it.
I’m now a mother of 2 boys aged 7 months and 20 months and if someone knocked on my door and said one if them wasn’t mine, there is no way in the world I could swap them back.
Absolutely no way.
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I am a midwife and stories like this reinforce why I am so fanatical about labelling babies well and then checking them against the mother’s name and wristband as well. For those babies unable to keep labels on, I have been known to put sticking plaster on their backs with their names on that (a trick picked up from premmies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). It’s not like babies know their own names or are mobile and hard to keep track of!
Cold shivers of terror running up my spine!
My heart goes out to these families.
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I’m the same about rooming in and not putting babies in the nursery unless absolutely necessary, if you’re doing night shift I can absolutely understand how easy it could be to pick up the wrong baby to give to a mother to feed. But yeah, always, always, always check the baby’s name tag against the mother’s name tag. And check the UR number as well, there can often be two baby Nguyens or Smiths on the ward.
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I watched the show and felt sick for these poor women. What a nightmare. I did wonder though how the story would have unfolded if one mum wasn’t better off than the other. Would the son in the poorer house have felt as compelled to move across the country to live with her if she wasn’t any better off? Mate it was the way 60 minutes presented the story but it certainly did seem the boy who moved did so for mainly financial reasons, as he felt he had missed out.
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I reckon it has happened more than we’d like to know. I too have heard of mix-ups that have been picked up by the mothers straight away or soon after.
I’d love to see a photo of the two boys as newborns to see how similar they look, cause when I gave birth I looked at my baby’s face and features pretty closely so I am pretty sure I would have been able to easliy pick up if I had been given the wrong baby.
Most babies are different- it’s hard to fathom unless Mum didn’t get to see the bub straight after birth.
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I watched this last night and the idea of children switched at birth is horrible, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Sandy who has no contact with either boy; it just broke my heart to think that these two boys could spend time with one woman but not the other.
That being said I don’t know what happened behind the cameras to cause both boys not to want anything to do with with her
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Just thinking about adopted kids, and how their situation may provide some perspective.
They don’t begin life with the family they are raised with, but almost all adoptive parents would argue that the bonds are as strong as if they had.
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I completely agree. Having had personal experience with adoption myself, I know for a fact that your family are the people who raise you.
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We have 2 sets of family friends who have adopted children and you occasionally hear somebody talk about the kids meeting their ‘real parents’. I know it’s just a saying, but I find it offensive! No disrespect to the birth parents who gave up their child (and in recent revelations sometimes without their permission!), but your ‘real parents’ are the ones who raised you, loved you, looked after you.
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I have been a stepmother to my husband’s children since they were 10 and 12 and the 10 yo has lived with us since then. He calls me Sandi to my face and my mum to everyone else.
I have seen him through the turbulent teenage years (he is now 21) and also the terrible years where he wouldn’t speak to his birth mother.
To this day, she doesn’t know the lengths I went to reconnect them, including a forced phone call, a car trip from hell where he cried all the way when he went for his first weekend in over 2 years, the role playing scenarios we did in preparation for that weekend and the secret phone calls for advice from the smuggled phone hidden in his shoe (the stipulation she made for the weekend was that he not have any communication means at all which he would not come at- no phone, no go at all).
All I am saying with this, is that I love him as my own son and the only regret I have is that I didn’t have the cute baby and toddler years as well.
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You must be a great Mum Sandi. Cudos.
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Yeah Gavin came across as a spoilt rich kid… I felt like he didn’t want anything to do with her coz he looked at her as a lower class to which he had been raised!! As a mother of 3 I can’t imagine being in the situation that them mothers have found themselves in.
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I also wondered about how strong the class separations are in South Africa. I don’t know enough about it to really say, but I had the impression that there was a huge separation between the Africans people and English people. Perhaps that divide is stronger than we realise here in Australia?
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I didn’t watch the show but oh my, what a horrendous thing. I can’t even begin to imagine what I would do. Crazy. Must go watch it on the 60 mins website.
True story, in the middle of the night a good friend of mine in a Melbourne private hospital was brought her newborn baby to breastfeed, just as she was about to put the baby to her breast she said to the nurse that she didn’t think it was her baby. The nurse said of course it is, my friend looked again and insisted it wasn’t. The nurse checked the name band, grabbed the baby and rushed out. It wasn’t her baby!
That this can even happen is horrendous!
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I look at my son and to be honest wouldn’t know what to do if I was suddenly told he wasn’t mine.
I think maybe instead of letting the parents choose the law should be that they just get swapped back as hard as it is and would be those families would have been better off swapping and just moving on
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I could not have given my son away, no matter what any law said. No chance in hell.
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Gee Megs is the spitting image of Gina Rinehart. That’s uncanny.
http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/news-and-events/opinion-does-gina-rinehart-s-move-on-fairfax-make-her-an-oligarch-not-yet-1453.html
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This could have happened to us. I was born in a Melbourne hospital in the sixties. Mum shared a semi private room in the maternity wing with another woman who had given birth on the same day. Back in those days the babies were cared for in the nursery and brought to the mother for feeding.
The nurses brought in the babies one morning to be fed. Mum thought I looked a bit different to how I looked the night before but began to feed. The other lady fed her baby too and then began to change the nappy.
Only then it was discovered that they had the wrong baby. The other baby was a boy! We have always wondered what would have happened if both babies were female. Mum doesn’t know why either baby didn’t have a wristband. Scary stuff.
baby.
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The same thing happened to a friend of mine. Except it took a few days before they realised! They laugh about it now, but it’s scary to think how many times it may have gone unnoticed…
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If Megs really cared about her son she could’ve given him financial support and allowed him to stay with his own mother – that is, the mother who raised him. She was only really thinking of her own needs, what she wanted for him rather than what was really best for him. It was interesting she said how much ‘she’ missed him. I’m sure Sandy missed him a lot more when Megs took him back. If you truly love someone unconditionally you put their own needs ahead of your own. Robyn was not old enough to know he may not be any happier or better off with Megs than with Sandy, and she took advantage of that. She was the one who was supposed to know better. But she wanted him for herself. Even if they had swapped them back it wouldn’t have been a better outcome. I’m sure it would’ve been even more traumatic for both kids to lose the only mother they knew, and in the end there would’ve still been misgivings about the life that either of them could’ve had.
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Completely agree!
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I completely agree with this. What Megs did was selfish and cruel…she had the means to give this child a better life without taking him away from his mother. That being said, Robyn must be some kind of an emotional cripple to be able to turn his back on the woman who loved him since birth all in the name of prosperity. I cant fathom any of it. The other thing that I wondered was why wasnt the hospital sued so that both boys could be provided for until they grew up? So many unanswered questions…
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What a horrific situation. I think that whatever you decide…swap or keep…then you would need to both agree that that’s the decision that you’ve made and then stick by it and cut off contact with the other family. It would be desperately hard to do but I think if you just carry on like any other family then there wouldn’t be any what ifs for the kids. For the parents yes, always, but that would have to be the unfortunate cross to bear.
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At 7.30 last night I said to my husband – I’m reading, there’s no way I’m watching that story on the switched babies. Then I watched it. Awful, just tragic, the whole story.
I used to look at my son when he was a baby and think that if someone knocked on my door and said he wasn’t mine that there is no way I could give him back. Not a chance. I would like to think that he would have felt the same way if he was told the same, that he would think oh well these two people have raised me since birth and they will remain my parents. But who knows until you’re in the same situation?
On a side note, I think Gavin came across as a smug unsympathetic character. Why doesn’t he go and see his birth mother, just as, you know, a kind gesture?
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I feel for Robyn in all this. He tried his best to get along with both mothers. Yes is was horrible that he left Sandy with nothing. But what about Gavin? He did nothing to try and have a relationship with his bio-mother and clearly has no interest in her ‘less fortunate’ life. I really feel for Sandy too. I think as hard as it would have been, they should have swapped them back, moved on and got on with their lives and never brought it up again. Easier said then done I know.
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I can honestly say…that I would want both. My own son back and to keep the one that I already had. I know….awful of me but really that would be what I would want.
A truly sad story. No winners.
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That is so terrible. And I can’t believe that the mother who essentially ended up with both sons doesn’t feel awful about what happened! Of course she got the best of both worlds – she got two sons instead of one (or none, as Sandy has ended up with). It’s very sad.
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This is incredibly sad. I wonder how much 60 minutes, with it’s revisiting them repeatedly, altered the outcome of the story? There seemed to be quite an emphasis by them placed on the disparity of economic status. It doesn’t take much of a seed for envy to grow.
It appears that the allure of even simple wealth has corrupted their relationships. None of it is about love from the boys at least. So sad. I just can’t see how Robyn could have completely turned his back on the woman who loved and nurtured him to teenagehood.
As hard as it would have been I think I would have switched them back.
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Your point about the effect of the 60 Minutes visits is really interesting. In particular, I felt quite uncomfortable with the questions Peter Overton was asking Gavin at 15, trying to make him feel guilty about living a life he’d had no choice about living.
‘You are happy with the life you were accidentally given …’ and, in particular, ‘Do you feel sorry for Robyn?’ What on earth was the poor kid supposed to say to that one? If he said yes, how would that make the only mother he’d ever known feel? And if he said no, he comes out looking spoilt and unsympathetic.
Not fair, 60 Minutes.
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this is one of those situations: until it actually happens to you, you have no idea of what you would do or how you would behave or feel.
You can speculate or hypothesise but unless in it you don’t know what you would do.
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this story comes at a time we are being told that record numbers of people in Australia are living in poverty. What is so sad is that the mother who was able to provide a stable upbringing for the child she raised, with all the opportunities and benefits it provides, was the one both children preferred to be with. The less well off mother was left with nothing.
Poverty is a terrible condition that means so much more than the clothes you wear, the toys you have etc. It is about education, values, health and making informed choices.
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Very hard for me to answer. What if I were sending my son to a worse situation than he has now (in my eyes)? What if I had the chance to send him to a better one? Would I feel a strong biological pull to my ‘real child’? If so why didn’t I feel it before finding out?
Megs is definitely right though – she does have the best of both worlds or at least ended up much better off in this situation than Sandy. What a mess… I’m almost leaning to it would’ve been better off for the boys to have been switched back when they were toddlers or the secret should’ve been kept forever.
Ugh I don’t know. So awful
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Worst.nightmare.
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I think (and I have NO IDEA if this means anything, given I have no idea what that would be like)… that I would swap. But try to remain in close enough contact with other family at least for the first few years.
But regardless of the decision, it would take a huge emotional toll. I feel for Sandy…
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Oh gosh… what a decision to have to make. I honestly don’t know what I would do!
Looking at my two children – 4 and 2 years old – I don’t think there is ANY WAY I could give them up, even if they were not biologically mine. It would just break my heart into a million pieces – I couldn’t even imagine the pain of having to go through something like that. But it’s easy to sit here and say what you think you would and would not do in a certain situation without actually having to be faced with the reality of it.
It’s hard to believe that mistakes like this can happen – although they obviously do. I wonder if there are many other families out there in the world unknowingly raising children who were accidentally swapped at birth??
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Wow, poor Sandy. Seems like this story brings up how much we value wealth and material possessions. I honestly have no idea if I would swap. There are so many other, wonderful situations where biology means nothing when it comes to family, such as adoption, step parents, foster children ect. But I guess at the same time if the children were young enough you would have to wonder if swapping might be better in the long term.
Also, wouldn’t it be a maternity test, not a paternity test?
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I assume that she was seeking a paternity test for another reason and, in getting the results, it turned out that it wasn’t genetically possible that she was the mother (i.e. the genetic markers were there for a particular father, but the other half of his genetic make up could not be accounted for given Megs’ genetic make up).
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Yeah, I saw this on 60 Minutes last night, and (if I remember correctly) that’s what happened.
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Aaauuuggghhhh…. I hate when i miss 60 minutes!
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I would unequivocally swap them back! I know it would be SO hard but it has been proven that children remember VERY little before the age of about four so the damage would be minimal for them.
This sad, sad story shows just how wrong everything can end up if the babies are not with their biological parents and born into the life that they were destined to lead.
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But isn’t the problem here that they knew. Wouldn’t their lives been filled with less trauma if they didn’t know they were ‘meant’ to have a different life?
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One of the boys on 60 Minutes actually said he would rather have not swapped but then stayed away from the other family.
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