Baby-swop mothers’ agony
Mother’s Day has bitter-sweet memories for two mothers who discovered more than 25 years ago that their sons were swopped at birth.
|||Pietermaritzburg -
Mother’s Day, on Sunday, has bitter-sweet memories for two mothers from opposite ends of the country who discovered more than 25 years ago that their sons had been swopped at birth.
A new book on their lives has again brought to the fore their anger and resentment at how the neglect of a nurse changed four people’s lives.
Although the four have issues with each other, they are united in one cause, to warn parents to make sure they take home their own babies from maternity wards.
“Boom! It was like I had been stabbed,” said Megs Clinton-Parker of Pietermaritzburg this week of that fateful day when she heard the news she was bringing up another woman’s child.
“I collapsed. It was as if I had passed out from shock. Then I cried. I cried for the child I had and the child I didn’t have. I knew without a shadow of doubt my life had changed forever.”
She shared a podium with author and television journalist Jessica Pitchford at the launch of Switched At Birth, about the lives of Clinton-Parker and her biological son Robin, brought up by Sandy Dawkins and her biological son Gavin, brought up by Clinton-Parker.
The mothers took each other’s sons home from Nigel hospital 27 years ago after the actions of a careless nurse led to the tiny tots wearing one another’s name tags.
Clinton-Parker said babies were still being identified with the wrong tags in maternity wards. “I’m telling you, some babies are still being switched.”
Both proceeded to raise them as single parents, although Clinton-Parker later married.
After they realised they were raising another’s child, when the boys were 23 months old and had bonded with their non-biological mothers, they decided to keep the child they had, but co-operated so the boys could spend time with their real mothers in their homes.
They jointly sued the hospital. They also appeared on television programmes, especially in Australia, and were all flown to the US.
But there were also times when they did not get on and that sour mood came to the surface with the publishing of Pitchford’s book.
“I had hoped in writing the book - to bring them together, to make them a family unit again,” Pitchford said in Pietermaritzburg this week.
“That failed miserably. I think I made things worse. All it did was bring out resentments.”
However, a second reason for Pitchford to write Switched at Birth was to help stop baby switching happening again, supporting Clinton-Parker’s belief it still occurs.
Her biological son, Robin, for whom she fought tooth and nail to have back in her life, was in the audience with his young family. However, Gavin, whom Clinton-Parker raised, and Dawkins, his biological mother, were absent.
The women, who came from very different backgrounds and economic circumstances, did not always understand each other.
Dawkins had a difficult upbringing on the East Rand and Vaal Triangle, Clinton-Parker from Pietermaritzburg professional stock.
The mix-up in the maternity ward was established when Clinton-Parker, hoping to get financial assistance from the baby’s father with whom she had had a brief fling, took Gavin for a blood test - and discovered he was neither related to her nor her former lover.
Tears flowed at the book launch as she recalled her pain. “I take a scab off each time and we’re going to do it again,” she said.
In the book it becomes clear that Dawkins blames Clinton-Parker for creating the circumstances for the switch to occur. It made no sense to her that Clinton-Parker felt the need to spare her Pietermaritzburg family the embarrassment of having a child out of wedlock, by having the baby upcountry.
“Her roots were in Pietermaritzburg. She should have stayed put. Then we would not have the mess we are sitting with now,” Dawkins said.
“My life ended up a total wreck. For 21 years I have not had a steady job. Depression cost me my job at the bank. If I was still there, I would have made 30 years’ service.”
When The Independent on Saturday phoned Dawkins on Thursday, she had just returned from a job interview. Her last decent job was 12 years ago. She lost it when the company went under.
“I’ve really got to get up and start from scratch.”
She said she and her daughter, Jessica, were living in her late mother’s house that would not be available to them for much longer. “I am in an extremely difficult situation.”
Clinton-Parker is critical of Dawkins for not taking Robin’s education as seriously as she would have, while disapproving of Dawkins’ harsher parenting skills when it came to discipline.
At one stage she left Robin and her daughter with relatives in Bloemfontein while she was pregnant with another child which she put up for adoption.
“My life was very different (from Clinton-Parker’s) because of my circumstances,” said Dawkins.
“I tried to bring Robin up the way we were raised. That was conservatively. Robin turned out okay. He’s a responsible adult. But he always was responsible.”
At the book launch, Clinton-Parker, who has also had her share of health problems, lashed out at Dawkins.
“I shall never forgive her for what she has done to him. The more I heard, the more resentful I became.”
Challenged by a member of the audience for her feelings towards Dawkins and that she should forgive her in order to heal, Clinton-Parker replied: “Time is a healer - I am sure that in time I shall soften. But not today.”
Dawkins had accused Clinton-Parker of trying to lure Robin away from her by spoiling him on his visits to Pietermaritzburg.
She added in the telephone interview that if her financial situation was better she would have liked to have seen more of Gavin as a child.
Gavin only visited his biological mother on a handful of occasions on neutral ground.
Dawkins stressed that there was a vast difference in the emotional and financial support she and Clinton-Parker received.
“She had a big close-knit family. I didn’t. I was on my own. My family had nothing.”
At the age of 15, Robin decided to live with his biological mother.
Before dropping out from Pietermaritzburg’s Carter High School, where Gavin was a successful pupil, Robin met his biological father, Dave Lotter.
Again, Robin made his own decision to move on and joined his dad in Howick, where he studied taxidermy and went hunting with his father in Zimbabwe. He also took the surname Lotter.
He moved to Louis Trichardt where he met and married Liezl. With their three children, they live in Mooi River, in the KZN Midlands, where he builds dairies.
He said the book was the final chapter to his unusual past. “I can put the story behind me and move on. I hope it doesn’t appear again.”
Of Dawkins, who brought him up, he said: “We just did not click.”
He said if he were in his mothers” shoes, he would have done things differently.
“The adults needed to be friends and for them to work on that.”
Gavin said in a telephone interview from Gauteng that he found the release of the book “surreal”.
“We grew up with camera crews filming us but it was all for international viewing. Now it’s been published here it’s closer to home and people are realising what happened. It’s a good thing, in a sense. It’s closing a chapter though the story will continue as long as Robin and I are alive.”
Gavin has come out as gay and has a career in digital marketing.
He said it was a coincidence he was in the same province as his biological mother, whom he sees, but not often.
“Pietermaritzburg was a great place to grow up, but it was not somewhere I could spread my wings.”
Pitchford said the next book launch was scheduled for Roodepoort and hoped to share the podium with Dawkins.
“I’d like to go but if I get this job I’m hoping for, I won’t,” said Dawkins, who has not seen the book. “I’d like to read it” she said, adding she was relieved the boys were grown up and “it’s all over”.
Meanwhile, Robin, has been determined not to allow history to repeat itself. The moment his first child was born, he wrote the baby”s name on his foot with a Koki pen.
“As it turned out, James Jarrod Lotter was the only baby born in Zoutpansberg hospital that day,” Pitchford wrote.
Independent on Saturday