ID Bracelets: and Babies Mix up

This past spring when I was at my folks' house, I made an interesting discovery.

As I have often done through the years, I was looking through my mom's old photo albums - and I found an old photo of some little girls that I didn't recognize mixed in with some of our own family photos.  Curious, I asked my mother about them.

 "Who are they?" I pointed to the photo of the 2 little girls, one approximately 7, the other maybe age 10.

Mom leaned over and pushed her reading glasses up further on her nose. "Oh....their mom was in the next bed to me when I delivered you. Every Christmas we would send each other photos of our children."

A few minutes later: "So....do you still  keep in touch?" I squinted at the photo, trying to make out the faces.

"No - they moved to Washington State and over the years we lost track of each other."

"So...?...I still don't get it. Why did you keep the photo? " I was curious.

Thoughtful pause.

"Well ....when you were born, you looked so different from the rest of the family, we were certain they switched you at birth - so we kept in touch over the years - just in case....." She shrugged.  "But....after a while it didn't matter."

This was the first time hearing this story.  Incredulous to say the least.

"It didn't matter after a while - you were ours.  We didn't need to keep in touch."

I continued to stare at that old photo.

Yes, I guess it really didn't matter, I thought.

Not anymore.

This was my family, for better or worse, and I am not sure that I would even want to look into Other Possibilities.



I did work for a few years at the hospital at which I was born.   They still had the ancient birth record books. I suppose I could have looked up my name.  Not that it would prove anything.

My mother had given me my little ID necklace with her name on it that they would put on babies in my birth hospital  55 years ago.  The beads were strung onto a very strong thread and then secured around the baby's neck with a blob of lead. (!)

 At the time I worked at that hospital, they were still making the same necklaces - only they were using the wrist/ankle plastic banding method as well.   The beads were more of a souvenir.

 They were reluctant to give up the old tradition -  they still would tie the beads around the neck.  I questioned them on the wisdom of that (or the lack thereof) - since we were instructing our patients never to tie anything around a baby's neck- safety reasons.   

I just handed them to the parents since they weren't used for actual ID-ing.

 I made another one with my name on it.  You can see that I have photo-shopped most of the letters off the white beads so my name is not legible.  It almost makes the beads with letters look like pearls.  The original and actual baby ID necklace I wore as a baby is on the right, the one I made up myself is on the Left.

Whether my ID necklace was put on right at birth....I will never know. My mom was a little foggy at the time...they did the "twilight sleep" back then for deliveries....and babies were whisked away to the nursery.  Mothers were alone in the delivery room back then, so my father wasn't able to confirm that I was the correct baby either.

Oh well.

Still, even though some things are not great in some delivery rooms now,  it's awful to think what they did to mothers back then......to not even know whether the baby handed to you was even yours......and not even feel that you could question the nurses or MD....?