Kid Swap

A few weeks ago, I read about a couple of kids in some European country (I think these were Czech families) that had been accidentally switched at birth. At the age of nine months, they were going to be switched back to their biological parents. My initial thought was, how could they??! I mean, directly after giving birth to my children, I fell in love with them and spent the ensuing weeks and months bonding and cementing that love into place. At nine months of age, a baby is only just beginning to develop an individual personality and could probably be switched without long-term psychological damage, but the fact remains that in that period of time you have learned to LOVE that child. Replace that child with another baby, biological or not, and it would certainly have a profound psychological effect on ME.

Well, then today, I read about another set of families that had switched children. These boys are four years old, and they are going to swap back. This, I think, borders on completely inhumane. I have a four-year old boy, and I simply cannot fathom giving him to someone else in exchange for another strange four-year old boy. Biological or not, that little one is still a stranger to you and your entire family.

I don't know if it's because I don't have a connection with my own biological parents (though I know them, and in fact, I was raised by my bio-mother's uncle, so the adoption remained within the family) or because I've had enough kids to cherish that bond between baby and mom more than anything in this world, but from my own perspective, my first instinct would be to keep the child I have bonded with. My 4-year old is a unique individual, and regardless of biological relation, I would not be able to simply say, "Here, you take this one, and then give me that one."

People give children up for adoption every day. You live your entire life knowing there's a person out there that you are directly responsible for creating, but you never know them and they never know you. Many of those people go on to have other children in their lives, and although they probably always remember and think of the baby they gave up, I don't think that they are unable to function because they can't be with their child. I have three children that I haven't seen in over six years, and it hurts every day, but I talk to them when I can and I cope. Loving all my children the way I do, I can't imagine giving one of them up in exchange for another child, as if the non-related child never meant anything at all to me.

I guess I was lucky. I never even thought about the possibility of a switch. When my first was born, it was in an Air Force hospital and I was the only one there. By the time I left, there were two other newborns, but mine was the only girl. I knew I'd gotten the right baby when I walked out (with that cute little red birthmark over her eye). My second and third (born a mere fifteen months apart, delivered by the same doctor in the same hospital room) were birthed in a hospital where the baby stayed in the room with the mom. On the one single occasion they had to be taken out for a blood-draw or something, the nurses compared and double-checked the matching ID bracelets on mommy and baby. Babies Four and Five were each homebirths and didn't leave my side until they were, like, fourteen months old.

I know in my heart that love is more than genetic. I wouldn't trade my parents for my bio-units in a million years. They have their faults, but they love me and raised me well, while my DNA-donors couldn't have cared less about me or even the kids they kept. I also know that if someone tried to take my two-year old Tootsie Pop away from me today, for any reason, I would kill them with my bare hands. I know she's mine, but if it came to light that she wasn't genetically mine, while some other two-year old was, I'd have to say okay, let's keep in touch - but you can't have the one I've raised.

I don't know how people do it, just switch like that... as if having the child of your loins is more important than having the child of your heart. I guess for some people it is. I only know it wouldn't be for me.