baby mix-up revealed after ten months

It's a mother's worst nightmare: to discover the child you have been nursing and caring for over the last ten months isn't your own.

For two mothers, living in the Czech Republic, the agony of having to swap their babies back is reality.

Jarosalva Trojanova, 25, gave birth to a daughter at Trebic Hospital, near Brno on the Czech-Austrian border, within 18 minutes of Jaroslava Cermakova on December 9th last year. Both mothers were suspicious when their daughter's weights seemed to shrink and grow overnight, but hospital staff reassured them that the girls' birth weight had been recorded wrongly.

After taking the wrong girls home from the hospital and caring for them as if they were their own, Jaroslava Trojanova's partner, lorry driver Mr Broza began to experience jibes from his work colleagues about how blond and blue eyed his daughter was, when he and his partner were dark. He decided to have a secret DNA test done over the Internet which confirmed he was not the father. When he challenged his partner with the shocking news, she decided to have a DNA test done too, which confirmed that neither of them were the parents of the child.

Two weeks later, the couple tracked down Mr and Mrs Cermakova to a village in the same county only 20 miles away. The two families met for the first time last weekend where they agreed that they would spend more time together before swapping the girls back before Christmas.

Both couples are convinced that medical staff confused the two babies perhaps because the two mothers share first names.

Mr Broza said: "We have missed so many milestones in Veronika's life; her first teeth and her first steps. Now we are determined not to miss her first birthday."

The couples plan to sue the Trebic Hospital for £250,000 for the mix-up. It's director Petr Mayer delivered them a written apology this week.

Thanks to the Daily Mail, 10/10/07

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