2 weeks Ago By The Telegraph
An elderly British woman has received an undisclosed compensation payout from the NHS after she discovered she was accidentally swapped at birth more than 70 years ago. It is the second case of a bureaucratic bungle by the NHS revealed in the past 12 months. Last year, the NHS admitted it had accidentally swapped two babies in the West Midlands more than 50 years ago.
In the latest case of baby swapping, the woman known as Susan (not her real name), from southern England, used a home DNA testing kit which revealed some genealogy she did not know that she had. “I did notice there was a lot of Irish heritage, which as far as I knew was wrong,” she told the BBC. “But I just pushed it aside and didn’t think any more of it.
I stopped paying for my subscription and that was it.” Suspected she was secretly adopted But six years later, Susan, who is in her 70s, was contacted by a man who shared her genetic information, raising the prospect she had a genetic sibling. She said her first response to the shock news – which came after the man also shared his genetic information with the genealogy company’s vast family tree database – was “just panic”.
“It was every emotion I could think of, my brain was all over the place,” she said. Susan then suspected she might have been secretly adopted. She asked her older brother, since her parents had died some years before.
He was certain the new revelation was a “scam” because his sister had always been in his life and he was “absolutely certain” one of his first memories was his mother being pregnant . But Susan still had her suspicions because she was taller than her brother and with her long, blonde hair had never looked like the rest of her family. Unable to bond with biological family Susan’s eldest daughter did some amateur sleuth work and found a copy of all the births registered in the local area on the day her mother was born.
The next baby girl on the list, registered at the same NHS hospital, had the exact surname as the man who contacted her through the genealogy website. Susan met her genetic sibling and laughed at how similar they looked. “If you’d put a wig on him and a bit of make-up, it could honestly have been me,” she told the BBC.
She has also seen photographs of the woman who she was swapped with at birth and her sons. But Susan admitted it has been difficult to establish a relationship with the rest of her broader genetic family who closed ranks around their sister. Like Susan’s genetic parents, her own parents – whom she described as loving and supportive – died some years ago.
She said she is glad they did not find out the truth. “In a way, I’m so glad they are not here anymore to see this,” Susan said. “If they are up there watching me, I really hope they don’t know what’s gone on.
” Newborns often separated from their mothers Jason Tang, from the London law firm Russell Cooke, which is representing Susan, said the NHS maternity care system was “far less sophisticated” in the 1950s. Babies were often separated from their mothers in large nursery rooms and cared for by midwives. It is standard practice in the NHS today to place two bands around a baby’s ankles immediately after birth and keep the mother and child together through their hospital stay.
“It may be that staff didn’t attach a card or tag immediately, or that it simply fell off and was put back on the wrong baby or the wrong crib,” Mr Tang said. Susan is one of the first cases of swapped babies to receive compensation but the amount was not disclosed. She was required to take a second DNA test before the NHS trust involved accepted its historic mistake and apologised.
For her, the settlement was never about the money but the recognition a mistake had been made all those years ago. “I suppose you always want someone to blame, don’t you,” she told the BBC. “But I know this will be with me for the rest of my life.
I just wanted a conclusion.”.
