Women realize they were switched at birth by NHS after DNA testing | British news

Two women only realized they had been given to the wrong mother 55 years after they were switched at birth in an NHS hospital.

The mistake came to light when Claire and Jessica’s brother ‘Tony’ both took DNA tests, which revealed they were biological siblings.

Confused by the result, they talked to each other about what might have led to it, revealing the connection to the same hospital.

Newborns in Britain are now immediately fitted with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, which can track their location, meaning accidental baby switching is now extremely unlikely.

But before the 1980s, departments relied on handwritten tags, which left much more room for error.

Clare was surprised by her own results, which showed no biological link to those she thought were her relatives, and included a cousin she did not know.

While Tony worried about his results and feared upsetting his mother, now in her eighties, Claire felt more that the results had explained something about her relationship with her family: ‘There were no similarities, in appearance or qualities (…) I thought: “yes – I’m adopted”.’

She and Tony discussed the best course of action, with Tony saying he would take her lead on whether she “wanted to move forward with this at all.”

Claire wanted to meet her birth family and was very emotional about meeting her birth mother and feeling like they had always known each other.

She found it difficult to talk about her own childhood, which she described as “very difficult” because she grew up in “absolute poverty, homelessness, often going hungry, and everything that goes with that.”

Breaking the news to the mother who raised her, who died earlier this year, was the hardest thing she has ever experienced, although she reassured them that nothing would change her feelings towards her.