Women Switched At Birth Find Out 56 Years Later

In the Rolodex of Potential Parental Nightmares, having your baby switched with someone else’s at the hospital is definitely in the top 10.

Now imagine that happening, but you don’t find out until 56 years later.

From Fox News:

On a spring day in 1953, two baby girls were born at Pioneer Memorial Hospital in eastern Oregon. They grew up happily, got married, had kids of their own and became grandparents. Then last summer their lives were turned upside down. Kay Rene Reed Qualls found out that she and DeeAnn Angell Shafer were switched at birth.

I mean, what the hell? Amazing story of course. But would you even want to know? Fox News says that “a woman who knew both their mothers called Qualls’ brother with her suspicion” that the switch had occurred. So they went out and got a DNA test, and yep, the yenta was right.

After the test, Ms. Qualls said “I cried…I wanted to be a Reed — my life wasn’t my life.”

But it is your life, isn’t it? I’ve never been in this situation before, but it comes up a lot on television. For example, on “Gossip Girl” (stay with me here, and spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t seen the show and is planning to watch it on DVD) Rufus finds out that his ex-and-now-current lover had a baby that she gave up for adoption. It was his. So he becomes obsessed with finding the kid, insisting that the child needs to know “his true father.” They eventually find the family that adopted him, and they lie to Rufus and tell him that the kid was killed in an accident. Why? Because they don’t want this “fancy New York couple” to take their son away from them. WHY? Because they lost their biological son in an accident, the same one they told Rufus killed his biological child, whom they adopted and can’t bear to lose. (It’s a good show, I’m not describing it well. Trust me.)

I know the situations aren’t the same, but it’s the same general idea. Does it matter what’s in your blood? The people who raised you are your parents, right? Or does it matter? I’m not passing judgment. (Unless you tell me “Gossip Girl” sucks and I’m too old to be watching it. OK, I’m a little too old for the show. But it doesn’t suck.) This is one of those situations I’ve never been in so I don’t know how I’d feel if I were.

Would you want to know your “real” family? Would it effect how you felt about the one you grew up with?

Source: Fox News