Bohemian Baby Dilemma
Which Baby Do You Keep, Yours or Your Own?
It's a maternal head-scratcher straight out of Dr. Seuss. Last December, a pair of Czech women gave birth in the same hospital less than 18 minutes apart. Ten months later, they discovered that the staff had switched their daughters. Now a judge says swap them back -- but after nearly a year of nursing, diapers and lullabies, exchanging infants is proving to be a lot harder than exchanging anecdotes about them.
Jaroslava Trojanova and Jaroslava Cermakova didn't know each other before entering Trebic Hospital on Dec. 10, 2006, but thanks to the biggest medical goof since the Benjamin Houghton affair, their lives will forever be connected. Trojanova and her boyfriend Libor Broza took home a baby girl she thought was called Nikola, while Cermakova and her husband Jan took home who they thought was baby Veronika. Each couple cared for, and as you might imagine, fell in love with the other's biological offspring. It was only after persistent pub chatter about Nikola's legitimacy prompted a DNA test that the mix-up was discovered.
Broza, a 29-year-old truck driver, describes it as "a total shock. Jaroslava [Trojanova] was inconsolable." Although the hospital has apologized, both couples are suing for about $500,000. Police are also investigating the incident, though some reports indicate that two nurses were to blame. Disturbingly, no one on staff appears to have connected the dots when one baby's weight dropped 1.65 pounds overnight while the other's went up that same amount -- despite their mother's concerns.
But whoever was to blame, a solution needed to be found. At first, the two couples agreed to switch their babies back. They then spent several days in an undisclosed location so their biological parents could get to know Nikola and Veronika and swap information about habits and diets. But the farewell-exchange may have proven too emotional for the parents, some of whom are now reluctant to let go. Trojanova was quoted asking: "How can I now see her as someone else's child and not my own?" As Czech psychologist Olga Hinkova, who is helping them through this, put it: the switch-back "will be more difficult for the mothers to cope with it than for the children." After all, unlike their daughters, they have the curse of knowing the truth, and barring amnesia, they can never unlearn it.
"We are facing a horrible dilemma," says Broza, who favors the exchange. "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. But at the same time, just 20 miles away lives our real daughter."
Their quandary raises a multitude of questions about nature vs. nurture, psychology and identity. I put it to you, loyal OFF/beat readers. If this happened to you, would you rather stick with the daughter you raised, or exchange her for the daughter you're related to?
Playing Stork
Note: This is an unscientific survey of washingtonpost.com readers.
By Emil Steiner | October 15, 2007; 10:00 AM ET | Category: OFF/beat Politics
Posted by: Pavlina | October 15, 2007 11:16 AM
What an awful position to put a family in. The hospital should be shut down and the doctors should lose their licenses. What is the matter with them??
Posted by: Kendra | October 17, 2007 10:18 AM
They are now going give the children back or not
Posted by: | October 17, 2007 11:54 AM
alourelv
Posted by: orcaliliv | October 26, 2007 10:50 AM
acboro
Posted by: eltrocvarge | October 26, 2007 3:23 PM
errolcaac
Posted by: chirolrelg | October 26, 2007 4:35 PM
it's a sad situation, but I think in the event of knowing, we would always stay close, the other parents and I. As much as I would like to say, I would keep the baby I raised, I know it may come that the child wishes it has been raised by its own mom, and the other parents, as I, would always wonder about our birth child. I believe we should all stay close so that we can watch our babies grow together.
Posted by: | October 27, 2007 12:17 PM
elsitlimon
Posted by: darliroeltt | December 30, 2007 2:59 AM
dronzelvarv
Posted by: vitrricdrone | December 30, 2007 3:00 AM
c4trori
Posted by: boc4tdronc | December 30, 2007 3:04 AM
ricdarri
Posted by: cnacodar | December 30, 2007 3:07 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.
Go with the baby behind door number 1, door number 1