Her child was switched at birth. But nobody believed her.

by SHAUNA ANDERSON

It was September 30, and new Mum Maria Lorena Gerbeno had just given birth to a beautiful baby girl. It was her third child, and after a c-section she was handed her newborn baby to nurse. But something didn’t feel right. In fact, something felt very wrong.

Whilst her newborn daughter was healthy, there was a nagging suspicion that went beyond new mother qualms.

For many parents the initial bonding with a precious baby is tough, but for Maria it went beyond that. She was suspicious and queried with the medical staff whether something was different about her baby. They assured her that this was her newborn daughter.

“When my baby was born by C-section, they told me straight away it was a beautiful girl weighing 3.1 kilos, but when they gave her to me they said she weighed 3.8 kilos and was a breech birth,” Gerbeno told Argentinian Broadcaster C5N.

Gerbeno, who is a lawyer, suspected something was wrong.

“I told them that could not be but they said I must have misunderstood. I never got any answers,” she said.

The family took the newborn home, but sought out authorities who subsequently ordered genetic testing and seized documents from the private clinic in San Juan.

Three weeks later in a twist of fate Maria Gerbeno ran into another mother in a newborn clinic.

The other mother, Veronica Tejada, had also given birth on September 30 in the same clinic, and after comparing weights of their infants the answer seemed obvious.

Maria Gerbeno made a criminal complaint and had a judge order DNA testing.

It confirmed what the mothers suspected, that the newborn babies who they had cared for, had breastfed, had loved, were not their own.

The babies had been accidentally switched at birth.

It’s happened before with incredible consequences. In 1989 in Johannesburg two single mothers gave birth to sons within half an hour of each other. But tragically a nurse made a life-changing mistake, putting the wrong name tags on the newborn babies.

What made this case was so famous, was that when the mistake was realized months later, the mothers decided not to swap back the babies.

However at the age of sixteeen the story grew complicated when one of the boys decided to seek out and live with his real mother. Heartbreakingly this left one family devastated and alone.

Back in Argentina, just this week, the two families of these newborn girls had to make a similar decision. For them it was a no-brainer.

In preparation for the exchange this week, Gerbeno and Tejada have been talking on the phone and swapping photos of their babies.

The nightmare was finally over. The nagging feelings that something wasn’t right were gone, and their babies were finally in the arms of their loving Mothers.

“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,’”said Lorena Gerbeno

They are both considering their options legally, and learning to love their own child all over again.

Shauna Anderson spent 18 years working as a journalist, producer and Chief of Staff in television. Her career has spanned the spectrum of journalism, from reporting at Today Tonight, Chief of Staff at Nine Network’s Today Show, working for the SMH and Woman’s Day and as wide and far as snow reporting and even a writer on the game show CatchPhrase.  She left TV to have three kids, now aged 2, 4 and 6. She now writes with her two year old on her lap and her two dogs chewing on her feet.