Two Argentine mothers have been reunited with their newborn daughters after spending three weeks unknowingly nursing and caring for each other’s children who had been switched at birth.
For Maria Lorena Gerbeno, 37, a lawyer from San Juan, it all started as a nagging suspicion that something was off about her baby daughter.
Both she and Veronica Tejada gave birth to healthy girls September 30 at the Sanatorio Argentino, a private clinic in San Juan.
Gerbeno, who also has two older children, delivered her daughter via C-section and was told by her doctors right after that her baby weighed 6lbs 8 ounces.
However, when the newborn was later handed to her, staffers at the clinic said that she weighed nearly 8lbs 4 ounces and claimed that she was delivered through breech birth.
‘I told them that could not be but they said I must have misunderstood. I never got any answers,’ Mrs Gerbeno recalled.
According to the mother of three, the facts simply did not add up, and then there was her maternal instinct, which kept whispering to her that something was not right.
The persistent feeling of suspicion turned into a certainty when, in a twist of fate straight out of a Bollywood film, Gerbeno ran into Veronica Tejada at the clinic when the two came in for a checkup.
The new moms struck up a conversation and soon realized that the birth weights of their respective infants matched up to the ounce.
Determined to uncover the truth, Gerbeno made a criminal complaint and had a judge order DNA testing, which confirmed last week that the babies had been accidentally switched at birth, according to Clarin
In preparation for the exchange this week, Gerbeno and Tejada have been talking on the phone and swapping photos of their babies.
‘I spent three weeks with a baby that was not my daughter but I gave her all my love and knew that the other mom would do the same,’ Lorena Gerbeno told the local station C5N.
On Monday, the two women and their spouses finally met in court to be reunited with their children.
The private San Juan clinic has admitted that a ‘mistake’ had occurred and stated that it is cooperating with the investigation.
Both the Gerbenos and the Tejadas are now considering legal action against the hospital