Babies swapped at birth in hospital mix-up lived with wrong parents for TEN months

 

Last updated at 14:47pm on 9th October 2007 Comments (9)

Two mothers handed the wrong babies in a catastrophic post-natal mix-up ten months ago have agreed to swap the children each thought was their own.

Little Nikola Broza and Veronika Cermakova have been nurtured, nursed, loved and cared for by parents who were not their biological mother and father. The mistake may never have come to light in Czech Republic had Nikola's parents Libor Broza, 29, and his partner Jaroslava Trojanova, 25, not undergone DNA testing.

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Mix-up: The daughters do in fact look very much like their real mothers. On the left, Veronika is held by her real mother Jaroslava Trojanova, while on the right Nikola is held by HER real mother Jaroslava Cermakova.

 

"It was a total shock. I just cried for two hours solid and Jaroslava was inconsolable; it was just impossible to believe that this could happen," Broza, a lorry driver, said. "We have raised Nikola for the past 10 months. She's a beautiful little girl who's always smiling and it's impossible to imagine her now living apart from us.

"But at the same time just 20 miles away lives our real daughter."

Libor became suspicious after jibes from his friends pointing out that he and Jaroslava were both dark-haired and brown-eyed but had a blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby.

He secretly decided to have a DNA test done over the Internet which revealed that he was not Nikola's father. When Jaroslava insisted he must be the father she too had a DNA test done - which revealed that the child was not theirs.

A fortnight after receiving the DNA tests the couple discovered that their real daughter Veronika was living with Jaroslava Cermakova and her husband Jan in a village 20 miles away.

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Jaroslava Cermakova with her real daughter Nikola

 

 

Before Libor noticed the discrepancy in his daughter's appearance, the two mothers themselves became suspicious when they realised that after Nikola's birth her weight shrank from 7.26lbs to 5.72lbs overnight, while Veronika's weight rose by 1.65lbs. Staff on duty at the time reassured them that the babies' weights on the day they had been born had been recorded wrongly.

 

The couples are convinced that medical staff at Trebic hospital accidentally swapped their babies the day after they were born on December 9. The children were born within 18 minutes of one another.

 

Jan has photographs showing that Veronika was tagged with just a number and no name on her arm while in hospital.

The couples met for the first time last week and agreed that they would all gradually spend more time together before swapping Nikola and Veronika back permanently before Christmas.

"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 and her first Christmas," said Libor.

"The whole situation is just awful. What can I say? You love your daughter, but, at the end of the day, she is not yours. Nikola is my little angel and so far I don't have any feelings for Veronika – I wish I could live with both of them," said Jaroslava, 25, who is still breastfeeding her.

Libor said the couples now each planned to sue the hospital involved for the equivalent of £250,000.

Trebic Hospital near Brno on the Czech-Austrian border has so far declined to comment publicly while an investigation was ongoing. Hospital director Petr Mayer this week delivered a written apology to the couples.

Libor added: "The Cermakova family are such nice people thankfully and we will support each other and get through this together. I am determined to have my real daughter back but it is such a difficult complicated process.

"We have to take it slowly and carefully. Jaroslava is taking it very badly. At the meeting with the Cermakova family she ran away and locked herself in the toilet for a long time, she couldn't face it. Her nerves are bad."

It's a crazy world

It's a crazy world

 

You're not kidding!!:rolleyes:

We will not give back our babies, insist the mothers given wrong daughters in hospital mix-up

 

Last updated at 16:49pm on 12th October 2007 Comments (29)

The mothers at the centre of an astonishing baby mixup last night refused to swop back their daughters.

 

The two women, who have cared for the girls for ten months, said they could not go through with the exchange agreed earlier this week.

Jaroslava Trojanova and Jaroslava Cermakova, both 25, gave birth in the southern Czech town of Trebic last December.

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Reunited: Jaroslava Trojanova with biological daughter Veronika and Jaroslava Cermakova with Nikola

 

 

But it was only last month that the suspicions of one of the fathers led to the revelation that their children had been accidentally exchanged in hospital.

Jaroslava Cermakova and her husband Jan have been living with Veronika, although their real daughter is Nikola.

Jaroslava Trojanova and her partner, Libor Broza, took home Nikola, although Veronika is really their child.

The families struggled to cope with their extraordinary predicament before deciding on a pre-Christmas swap.

But yesterday Miss Trojanova was adamant she could not give up her non-biological baby.

"I cannot even begin to imagine a life without Nikola," said the factory worker.

"How can I now see her as someone else's child and not my own?"

Mrs Cermakova, who is pregnant again, also insisted she would not hand over the girl she was given.

"I have loved my daughter for almost a year now," she said.

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Jaroslava Cermakova with her real daughter Nikola

 

"This time cannot be erased from my heart. But I will learn to love my other, biological daughter too."

The couples have moved into a retreat and have discussed raising their children as 'one big family'.

Disagreeing with his partner, Mr Broza, 29, insisted he wanted to take home his real daughter Veronika.

"We are facing a horrible dilemma and the mothers are suffering the most," he said.

"But we will eventually need to swop our babies back.

"I would like to have my own daughter, although my love for Nikola will never diminish."

The county court in Zdar Nad Sazavou ruled yesterday that the birth certificates would not be changed and that the couples should simply swop babies.

That means that Nikola will legally assume Veronika's identity and vice versa.

Mr Cermakova, who is out of work, said: "We are completely cluelessas how to go about this, it is such a horrible situation.

"But we agree on one thing: our daughters will have four parents. We will raise them together as one big family.

"We are bonded together for ever by this terrible fate of ours. My wife and I, we say that we will have two daughters from now on.

"It would be impossible to simply give up on our baby, even if we are not the biological parents."

The Cermakovas live in Trebic, 30 minutes' drive from Jablonov, the home village of Mr Broza and Miss Trojanova.

Mr Cermakova, 26, said the families-were considering whether they could settle in the same place.

The mistake arose when nurses failed to write the children's surnames on their leg bracelets.

The mix-up was revealed after Mr Broza, a lorry driver, became suspicious because both he and his partner are dark-haired while their baby was blonde.

He took a DNA test, the results of which strained his relationship with Miss Trojanova until she had a DNA test herself and they found neither was related to Nikola.

The shocked couple alerted Trebic hospital and more DNA tests confirmed the blunder.