Hospital Delivers Wrong Baby To Couple

A Hospital in El Salvador gave one couple visiting the country from Texas the wrong baby.

Richard Cushworth, originally from Britain, and his Salvadoran wife, Mercedes Casanella, are Christian missionaries who live in Texas. They went to El Salvador so Casanella could have her child born there, BuzzFeed reports.

But when Casanella was about to leave the hospital with her newborn child, she realized both its features and dark skin differed from hers and her white husband’s.

“Around 8 a.m., they started to bring the babies to their mothers, and I waited for mine. But when I took him I saw that he was very different to the one I had held in the delivery room. When I changed his clothes I noticed that his genitals were very dark and not rosy like how I’d remembered,” Casanella said.

“I said to the nurse, ‘look, his genitals are very dark,’ and she told me, ‘no, that’s normal, that’s normal,’” she added.

What’s more, before she gave birth, the gynecologist, Dr. Alejandro Guidos, repeatedly mentioned he believed her child would be dark-skinned.

“I always thought that was strange,” she said. “How would he know that from the ultrasound scans, and why would he keep saying it?”

These suspicious incidents made the couple worry their real child may have been kidnapped and trafficked.

After taking a DNA test upon returning to their home in Texas, her fears were confirmed: the child was not theirs.

“I have a beautiful baby at home. It’s not mine and maybe there’s another mother suffering the same as I am and perhaps I have her baby,” Casanella said at the time.

Luckily, both children were eventually returned to their respective biological parents, the BBC reports, and Guidos was eventually arrested.

The incident left its marks on the couple.

“It’s a horrible situation for me, for her [Casanella] for my family, her family. A child is an experience you have for a lifetime … this is a life-long injury that’s very, very deep, and it’s horrible,” Cushworth said.

Sources: BuzzFeed, BBC News / Photo credit: NBC News via BuzzFeed