Swapped babies have led to some tough decisions

In his book Two in One, the late Mwangi Gicheru tells the story of identical twins who are separated at birth.

Eighteen years later, they discover their real identity following a string of coincidences that brings their paths together at the Nairobi showground.

This story is similar to other instances where families have been thrown into confusion after discovering that children they had all along believed to be theirs had been swapped at birth.  

The current case where a family in Kakamega is struggling to come to terms with the possibility that one of their twin daughters could have been separated at birth is only one in a number of such cases that have been reported around the world.

Most of these cases are as interesting, as they are shocking. Most have left families devastated, traumatised and struggling to cope with the ensuing shock.

In 2017, for example, a Russian man, noting that the child his wife had brought home “looked different” killed a fellow villager whom he accused of fathering the child.

Swapped at birth

Thirty years later, it turned out the baby had been swapped at birth and was living in abject poverty in a rural Russian village.

The Daily Mail reported that Zoya Tuganova, a former railway official, discovered her daughter after years of torment that led to the destruction of her family and the jailing of her jealous husband

In yet another case, a court in South Africa ruled that two girls who had been swapped at birth could stay with their parents who had raised them.

The story begun at Tambo Memorial Hospital in Boksburg, East of Johannesburg, where the mix-up occurred.

The story unraveled when one of the women separated from her husband, who then demanded a DNA test on the child before he could pay for upkeep. To their consternation, the test revealed that the child belonged to neither parent.

Investigators then tracked down the family of the second baby and the matter eventually ending up in court, with one of the women demanding that she keeps her real child. The court, however, dismissed the case arguing that the children would be more comfortable in their adopted families.

In yet another case, a drunken nurse swapped two babies at a clinic where the children had been taken for treatment for jaundice. When the matter was eventually discovered, the swapped girl decided to stay with her biological mother.