Swapped as babies

“Was that already me – or is that still you?”

The women share testimonies of a carefree childhood.(Bild: Jürgen Fuchs)

A few days ago, two families from Styria found out that they left the Graz maternity clinic 35 years ago with the "wrong" child. Now those affected are focusing on coming to terms with their fate.

"Was that already me - or is that still you?" They both have to laugh. Doris is visiting Jessica, who lives with her family just a stone's throw away, for the first time on Saturday afternoon. Together they look at baby photos, pictures from her "old" life. Even they find it difficult to tell the children in the pictures apart because of the strong resemblance they bore as newborns.

In the background, the women's sons play with the house cat Otto. The children have no fear of contact. There is coffee - and a lot of talking. "Suddenly my mother remembers countless details from the past," says Doris. "For example, that I used to have severe headaches as a small child and would hold my temples with my hands." Pause. "Maybe after-effects from the forceps birth?"

The women share memories of a carefree childhood.(Bild: Jürgen Fuchs)

Doris' favorite stuffed animal was called Jessica, of all things.(Bild: Jürgen Fuchs)

Because, as the parents now know from this week, they did not take the baby home from Graz University Hospital in 1990 that they had given birth to there a few weeks earlier. Both girls were premature and had been separated from their mothers for a long time. "It's not important to me when exactly the mix-up happened," says Jessica. "I'm not angry with anyone, no nurse or anyone else - nobody does something like that on purpose, please."

I'm not angry with anyone, with any nurse or with anyone else - nobody does anything like that on purpose.

Jessica

Doris doesn't think about looking bitterly in the rear-view mirror either: "I'm just glad that the search is over now. We still get so many touching messages. Even strangers who have only followed my story from a distance via the media are writing to me and are genuinely happy for me."

We still receive so many touching messages. Even strangers write to me on Facebook to say that they are happy for me.

Doris

Jessica's son wants to sit on his mom's lap. Doris' younger son insists on going home. He can hardly wait to get to the fire department party where his dad is waiting for him. Then he utters a sentence that probably best describes the scene: "It's so strange: somehow life goes on as normal - and yet everything is completely different."

Kommentar

Eine Geschichte, die mich nie losgelassen hat

"Barbara, are you sitting down?" Doris Grünwald asked me on the phone on Monday morning. Thank goodness I was sitting down. "You won't believe who's sitting next to me right now" ... You pick up most stories in the daily newspaper business, follow them for a while - and then let them go again straight away. But this story, which began for me in 2016, has never let go of me.

I was involved right from the start when it became known that two babies had been switched at Graz University Hospital. Some of those affected - the Grünwald family - turned to the public for the first time almost ten years ago via the "Krone" newspaper, desperately searching for their counterpart. Unfortunately in vain. They were disappointed, and so was I.

Nevertheless, life went on. Doris, the exchanged daughter, found love, had two wonderful children and moved into her painstakingly renovated house in a small town in the east of Styria. We came together again and again, behind the radiant photos in the newspaper were often hidden valleys of tears that were never reported publicly.

Over the years, I have been particularly impressed by Doris' strength and confidence, who suddenly lost her roots at the age of 22: always positive, always grateful for what is there.

She finally found what Doris had always been looking for: Jessica, the "other" daughter(Bild: Jürgen Fuchs)

Despite the abundance in her life, however, there was always this one lack, a void that no one else and nothing else could compensate for: the agonizing question of her biological parents. "Why don't they get in touch? Do they lack the courage? Do they not want to know? Or have they perhaps not even noticed my desperate search?" Doris' thoughts went round in circles. But she never thought of giving up.

The fact that this unusual life story with Jessica, the other daughter who was swapped, and her parents Herbert and Monika recently came to a happy ending is one of the most moving experiences of my life. As a journalist, but above all as a wife and mother.