The Marquette Journal

What would you do if you found out your baby wasn’t really yours?

In retrospect, you’d probably freak out and wonder how this mistake could have happened. Sadly, over 20,000 babies per year are given to the wrong mothers, according to a PRWeb article. That’s in hospitals. It makes you wonder if you are a mix-up baby, doesn’t it?

Imagine that you’re a woman who has been trying everything for months. You’ve had difficult pregnancies, tried In Vitro Fertilization and are finally pregnant. Ten days after you find out that you are pregnant, you’re informed the embryo implanted in your uterus is not yours. I’m talking to college students, so this might be a hard thing to put into perspective, but this happened to a real couple in Ohio.

Carolyn and Sean Savage experienced such a mix-up in February. Carolyn, now 35 weeks pregnant, will soon be saying hello and goodbye to her newborn. The Savages and the biological parents have met.

This sparked a lot of debate in the Student Media office. I figured that I would give my input on this issue.

This couple is a good, Christian couple (according to the CNN article). They knew they didn’t want to throw out the leftover embryos from their last IVF, so they tried for their fourth child. Then Carolyn found out she has the wrong baby in her uterus. I’m thinking sue, they thought that they would just give the baby to the rightful parent.

I applaud this couple for doing the right thing.

I’m going to give some “what ifs” that make this situation that much better: (Note: Do not take the following as truths. They are meant to lighten the unfortunate situation that the Savage family was put in.)

• What if the baby sucked? It cried all the time, pooped everywhere, grew up hating you and hating everything about life. I would want a refund or a baby swap.
• What if the other couple had your embryo? Then, everything is out of your hands. It isn’t like there was an “oopsie” in the hospital and you can swap the babies back. You actually have to deal with the other family taking care of your baby. Not like this is a normal thing, but what if the baby comes out wrong because the mom didn’t do things correctly while carrying? Your baby gets the short end of the stick and they get the other one back.
• What if your poor, old grandma’s house gets burnt down by your little, devil of a child, and you get stuck with damage? Do you tell your kid they really don’t belong to you and they have to deal with it on their own?
• At least you don’t have to worry about the baby being the milk man’s kid.
• Don’t worry if your baby is slightly unfortunate in the looks department, you’re getting a new one anyway. Then again, you could have the really hot celeb baby. Do you take the money or give it to charity? Maybe the biological parents are a good option.
• What if you like both babies? Do you do joint-custody or the Solomon style, separate both babies and share?
• What if the other parents are better-off? If your kid asks to live with them do you let them go?

Just saying.

This is all my opinion, and thankfully it is the popular one.

Tags: babies, carolyn savage, hospitals, in vitro fertilization, mix-up, parents, sean savage

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 10:08 pm and is filed under Blogs, Online Exclusives, The Popular Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.