Playing Nice: to think you'd know the baby wasn't yours?

[lover99]

Just seen the trailer for Playing Nice on ITV where the premise is that the babies were switched on accident and the couples left the hospital with the wrong infant.

Am I being unreasonable to think that you would know instinctively that the baby wasn't related to either of you?

There are recognised cases of this happening, only discovered years later.

For example
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp3njqd9nl9o

Both my DDs were taken away from me for a short period after they were born. I am not convinced i would have known if they had brought back the correct baby. DD1 at least had her identity bracelet on but DD2 was taken away in a hurry. I assume i got the right baby back...

My DM was given a girl instead of a boy in hospital. She was unconscious after an awful home delivery (early 1960s) but had thankfully glimpsed a bald boy and so rejected the girl with hair she was given later!

This happened in the (non UK) hospital that my cousin was born in. As a result, when she was born about a year later, she had her name painted down her body as soon as she was born.

I think I've remembered that correctly.

No, of course not all parents will just instinctively know if they were handed the wrong baby. Why would they?

When one of my twins was in Nicu I walked in the room and had to read the paperwork to find out which was mine. I'd only caught a glimpse of him. It would be easy to mistake a newborn

Thankfully both of mine had distinctive birthmarks, noticed straight after delivery. I'm not convinced I would have known them otherwise - particularly in my knackered and drugged state.

If I hadn't seen my daughter lifted out of my stomach right in front of me I never would have thought she was mine!! Newborn babies look so weird, and you're in such a state - I couldn't relate her to me physically at all at first.

I never let mine out of my sight (and thankfully didn't have to) but tbf I was born at the same hospital and they gave my mum the wrong baby but she told them and got me back.

I had friends who in the midst of nighttime feeding and nappy changes at day 3 lost track of which identical twin was which. They have never known which was the elder.

Mmm I'm not sure you'd 'instinctively' know no

Me too. It was such a difficult situation, I couldn't visit NICU twin until I had someone to mind other twin on the ward and ward baby was not feeding and NICU baby was due to feed. I also had a section and needed to organise a porter and wheelchair. As a result I didn't see NICU baby for almost 24 hours and there was a while I genuinely forgot I had him with all the pain relief making me semi delirious. I had never seem him at birth either so had to ask which was mine.

My eldest DS was taken away to NICU 20 min after a traumatic delivery. When the epidural wore off and I was able to walk down, I had an awful awful moment of standing in the room of incubators, staring at all the babies and wondering which one was mine. I semi guessed based on the amount of hair he had, and breathed the biggest sigh of relief when I looked at the chart and saw our names.

I still compared him to his baby photos taken straight after birth, just to make sure, as it was a terrifying feeling.

Are you saying that none of the mothers this has happened to in real life had any instinct?

I went to a weekly baby class when on maternity leave with DD, and recently saw a sweet photo of DD playing at a session and liked it. Then realised it wasn’t DD, it was a baby in an identical outfit 😂

But it you are interested there was the Kim Mays and Arlene Twigg case as well as Callie Johnson and Rebecca Chittum cases.

Both are sad. Arlena Twigg died aged nine and it then came to light she wasn’t her parents’ biological daughter. Kim Mays went off the rails when she found her identify out. And in the Callie / Rebecca case, Callie’s biological parents were killed in a car crash days before the switch was exposed.

I always thought that was a possibility with twins and that if I had any I'd have to put some kind of different coloured bracelets on them both instantly or there would be no way of knowing for sure id never mixed them up.

I don't think id have known instinctively if I was handed a newborn only a few hours old and told it was mine if it wasn't.

Yes I am fairly confident that I would know. When your children are born you recognise them like you already know them. However I can also see that saying 'that's not my child' would be taboo and people wouldn't want to admit that they didn't think the baby was theirs, so they might put doubts and niggles to the back of mind and reassure themselves that the hospital wouldn't have made a mistake.

I have two babies. A boy who looked exactly like his dad from the moment of birth, and a girl who looked exactly like my mum. Both of their faces were totally familiar to me from the first time I held them. I was also relatively alert as they arrived. I have wondered whether it would be possible to take the wrong baby home, especially a first baby, and just think all babies seem like little strangers at first. Then you bond and you don't realise it's weird not to notice the baby has your dad's smile/your own bad temper/ your partner's knobbly knees etc. But then if you subsequently had another baby (and this one wasn't swapped!), surely you would notice that those genetic similarities weren't showing themselves in your first? I wonder if women do instinctively know but it's too painful to allow those feelings any credence.
When I was about 7 I had a dramatic moment and shouted at my mum that I thought I was adopted. I remember her very clearly laughing a lot at this and pointing out all the ways I looked and was like various family members. I was so clearly not adopted. The converse must be true for swapped babies - they must clearly not belong biologically. There's a podcast about this, about a family in Alaska, I think.

I laughed so hard at this. Surely you’re having a laugh - everyone knows that all babies (irrespective of sex) look like Winston Churchill x

Both of my children were born by EMCS under GA in 1969 and 1972.I never set eyes on them until they were two days old, they were kept in NICU as had breathing problems due to their traumatic births and I was very ill myself and not allowed to go and see them.
My introduction to my sons both times was they were carried in the arms of a nursery nurse, the second one said "here is a present for you".Both were wrapped up like parcels all clean and tidy as if they were dolls from a toy shop.
Somehow in my hazy drug filled state I accepted them as mine without question
As they grew up I was certain both were mine, although they have completely different personalities they have traits like my husband and myself also they resemble family members on both sides.
I am now a grandmother and great grandmother courtesy of DS2.He has a daughter who greatly resembles one of my sisters also looks like my great grandmother from a photo I have of her.One of my great grandsons looks like his great grandfather my now late DH and has a similar personality to my DS2 his grandfather.

Both mine looked like a potato - I had zero experience of babies before I held my firstborn, and apart from his hair I don't think I'd have noticed being handed a different baby.

He's now my spitting image, and DD is her dad's double, so I'm sure they didn't get mixed up.

@Owly11 I really don't think that's true. Both of mine were taken away immediately for urgent treatment after c sections, the first one I was also unwell and in the HDU for 24 hours. I had no idea which was my baby when I eventually got to the SCBU. Thankfully my partner went with each of them and stayed with them, so he would have recognised them and checked their identity bracelets were correct. But I didn't have a clue.

The converse must be true for swapped babies - they must clearly not belong biologicall

@Abitlosttoday adopted children can often be mistaken for biological children if they are the same race. No one ever questioned my connection to my parents, we had the same colouring, hair and eye colour and same race, no strong features. A similar type you could say. We had the same mannerisms and accent. People often commented that I was like my mum or sister (also not biological) someone noticed we had the same laugh and even drunk danced the same! I also developed a medical condition identical to my Mum, its common enough but still a coincidence. My birth Mum is less like me, I can see the same nose and hairline but on balance I'm more like my adoptive family, in person maybe not in a photo. I know that's not always the case but it can happen a lot.

My son has a red Harry Potter mark on his face and he has the same freckle pattern on his leg as me, I would be able to tell if I didn't get the baby.

No. Mine were very distinctive so recognisable but if they’d looked like standard bald babies with scrunched faces I think I might have struggled.