#MicroblogMondays: Yikes!

A story in the news this week gave me chills: two men, born on the same day in 1955 in the same small-town Manitoba hospital, recently learned they were switched at birth -- sent home with the wrong families. It's the THIRD such mix-up in Manitoba hospitals that's been discovered in recent years, and the fifth in Canada, including two more in Newfoundland.  Many of these cases, sadly, involved babies from Indigenous/Metis families/communities. In this case, the two men are requesting compensation and correction of their birth certificates from the province, and the provincial opposition critic for Indigenous Affairs is calling for an inquiry.

For me, it's also chilling from a personal perspective. When I was born (in 1961 -- also in a small hospital in rural Manitoba), it was common practice for babies to be kept in the nursery and brought to their mothers for feedings, etc. My mom had had ecclampsia, and was there for two weeks after I was born. I remembered that years ago, she told me that one day she took one look at the dark (likely Indigenous) face in the bundle they handed her and told the nurse this was NOT her baby. They eventually found me and brought me in to her.  

I've never done a DNA test (yet) -- and I'm not worried -- anyone who looks at me, and then looks at my parents, and/or my sister, knows whose child I am!  (My sister and I were known as "the Bobbsey Twins" at school when we were growing up...!)  But it did give me pause when I heard this latest story. It's scary to think that such mix-ups could (and did) happen, and that I could very easily have wound up with the wrong family, and led a very different life -- and then when I read that this particular case is the THIRD such case discovered in Manitoba from that era...!  Yikes!! 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.