Two Families Make Difficult Decision After Learning Their Babies Were Switched At Birth
Even in the most diligent and regimented system, mistakes can happen. Even if some people lean on this excuse too hard sometimes, it is the nature of humanity. But how much those mistakes matter can depend a lot on where they happen.
That's especially true in a hospital, where some mistakes can mean the difference between life and death. But while one boy's situation wasn't quite that severe, it's nonetheless hard for him not to feel as though he was robbed of the life he was supposed to have. And that's not just because of one mix-up.
After Two Years, The Truth Is Revealed
As The Daily Mirror reported, Megs Clinton Parker and Sandy Dawkins checked into Nigel Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa, in February 1989. They had never met and did not live near each other, but they had one thing in common.
Both women were here because they were about to give birth. And that birthing process wouldn't end up the way that either one of them had planned it. However, that wasn't immediately clear, nor was there any reason to doubt what they were seeing.
Two Women Were About To Receive Huge News
When an easy but consequential mistake was later discovered, it wasn't hard for the hospital to narrow down the affected parties. Because out of all the patients Nigel Hospital housed that day, there was something else that tied Dawkins and Parker together.
They were the only two women that were there to give birth that day. If either of them happened to have their water break on a slightly different schedule, both would have carried on with their lives, and their stories would have nothing to do with each other.
A "Normal" Day At The Hospital
Indeed, circumstances seemed to conspire to put their labors as close together as possible. Not only did Dawkins and Parker both give birth to boys, but those boys were born within half an hour of each other.
But as one of them, Robyn would later tell 60 Minutes Australia, neither baby was tagged with their name and parenting information immediately after they were born. It wasn't clear what had prevented staff from acting more swiftly in this respect, but it didn't appear to matter at first.
Home Life
According to 60 Minutes Australia, both Dawkins and Parker were single mothers at the time. Life as a new parent rarely goes smoothly under those circumstances, but both mothers had every reason to believe that their family lives were progressing under normal circumstances.
Parker had named the boy who went home with her Gavin, and Dawkins had named her baby Robyn, and for the next two years, they would raise and love each child as their own. After all, why wouldn't they be their own?
The Two Newborns Were Given The Wrong Tags
Although details of this chapter of her life are sparse, The Daily Mirror reported that Parker would end up in a quarrel over the paternity of Gavin's biological father. Although the man she believed to be Gavin's father wasn't publically identified, it was clear that he contested his role in the child's conception.
This disagreement escalated into a lawsuit, which required a DNA test. And while the results were presumably what the man was hoping for, they came as a complete shock to Parker.
Returning Home With The News
Not only was Gavin's DNA not a match for the man, but Parker was stunned and bewildered to discover that her supposed baby didn't share her DNA either. Since this seemed like a complete impossibility, it naturally warranted a call to the hospital where it all began.
And their records confirmed that the delay in processing the two babies had life-changing consequences. When staff got around to it, they accidentally switched Gavin and Robyn's respective information around. Thus, both babies were sent home to the wrong mothers.
A hard decision
The news was disturbing for both mothers but didn't change as much about their plans as some might have expected. Since both loved the children they thought were theirs, they continued to raise them more or less as if nothing had happened.
In a quote obtained by 60 Minutes Australia, Parker said, "You see, initially, I think you protect the one you've got. You know, the first few days of shock. Then, the curiosity comes. Well, hold on a second; it's not as easy as that. Where's my baby?"
Living Two Different Lives
Although The Daily Mirror noted that the two women treated each other like sisters once they learned about each other in 1991, they also decided not to switch the children back. For Parker, in particular, this was a decision with complex consequences for her family.
As Parker would later tell 60 Minutes Australia, "I don't think there is a correct decision. I don't think everyone, even in the family, agrees with the way I did things, but I think they understood."
Only A Mother's Choice
At the same, Parker said that the family members who disagreed with her also didn't envy her for having to choose between the boy she had already held and loved for two years and the boy she gave birth to.
In her words, "But they were also glad it wasn't their choice, and they said, 'It's your choice. Thank you, we're glad we don't have to make it." For her part, Dawkins thought the similarities between the two were so strong that it was hard to get over her disbelief that Robyn wasn't her child.
Living Very Different Lives
Regardless of how anyone felt about it, the choice was made. As a result, the two boys lived about 310 miles away from each other. And the lives they came home to varied a great deal.
According to 60 Minutes Australia, Gavin was raised in a fairly affluent home in Pietermaritzburg, the capital of South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province. By the time he was growing up, Parker had help from his new stepfather raising him. Looking back, he doesn't appear to have any complaints about how life turned out.
Robyn's Life Was A Bit Harder
However, Robyn didn't get to enjoy many of the privileges that Gavin had growing up. Dawkins remained a single mother and would raise him on the outskirts of Johannesburg. 60 Minutes Australia described his household as often struggling to make ends meet.
This meant that as he grew up, his feelings about his circumstances were far more complicated. As The Daily Mirror reported, he struggled to accept his mother's decision as early as age 15 and called Parker daily. He made it clear that he missed her terribly.
The Two Boys Got Along
However, one mitigating factor for Robyn was meeting Gavin, who he started spending some time with when the boys were 11 years old. Although Gavin wasn't sure what to think about their first meeting, Robyn appreciated having someone he could consider a brother.
As he told 60 Minutes Australia back then, "I met Gav, and it was, like, cool. We do things together. We get up to some mischief sometimes, but at least we know each other. If we weren't swapped, I don't think we would have had a good time because we're like brothers to each other."
Robyn Begins To Feel Resentful
However, as Robyn got older, he found it hard not to feel as though he got the raw end of the deal the two mothers made back in 1991. And that had a significant effect on both his relationship with his birth mother and his spiritual brother.
As The Daily Mirror reported, Robyn admitted to resenting Parker for not fighting to have the children switched back and keeping him. At the same time, he also mentioned resenting Gavin for getting an easier life that otherwise would have been his.
Robyn Sees Life As A Series Of Ups And Downs
That having been said, Robyn tried to look at life with a realistic, accepting perspective when he was interviewed again at 15. He aimed to see his situation as simply a series of ups and downs and to see value even in the bad times.
He said, "There's been some hard times and some good times. But that's life; life swings you those things to make a better person out of you." Robyn further mentioned that one of the hard times included coming back from the vacation he spent with Gavin.
Parker Saw Things Differently Than Robyn
For Parker, a significant factor in her decision to keep things as they were had to do with the kind of environment she would be introducing Gavin to. She also noted that she was acting on the advice of others in her life.
As Parker told 60 Minutes Australia, "They felt that you can't put a child from a good environment and put them in a bad, and I know that sounds dreadful. You don't take a child out of an environment and put them in a worse environment."
Still, Parker Kind Of Regrets Her Decision
Parker shared her belief that Gavin wouldn't have survived life on the outskirts of Johannesburg but was also aware of and appeared to regret the implications of this belief for Robyn. She also expressed awareness of the consequences of her decision.
She said, "By letting Gavin stay, I basically sacrificed Robyn, didn't I? But I think he survived, and he's a lovely boy. But I knew he'd be resentful, I knew that. And I don't blame him, he's right."
A Difficult Childhood
Indeed, Robyn has faced a great deal of internal turmoil about the circumstances of life at Dawkins' home compared to what he missed out on. And the knowledge of how easily everything could have turned out differently doesn't help matters for him.
As he said, "It's not easy. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy." And when asked if the mix-up and the decisions it prompted make him angry in retrospect, he admitted that this is sometimes the case.
Things Were Easier For Gavin
As Robyn added, "It's difficult. If I ever wanted anything, I've had to work toward it. I've never just had it come toward me." Although he didn't want to give the impression that he never had anything, the differences between their upbringings were obvious to him.
From his perspective, things came far easier to Gavin than they came to him. So, while he's tried to look at the world from a patient, mature perspective, it's hard for resentment not to creep in when someone is faced with that situation.
Gavin Doesn't Feel Bad
When Gavin was asked whether he felt sorry for Robyn, he simply said, "Not really," without any further elaboration. For his part, he was more keen to share his appreciation for how well things worked out for him in life.
According to The Daily Mirror, he said, "Saying I thank my lucky stars every day would be wrong, but at the same time, I was given a life which I've now lived, and I’m still living, and I don’t regret anything."
Fighting Like Brothers
Although Gavin and Robyn would see each other when school let out for the summer, these reunions weren't quite as joyful as they once were by the time they turned 15. While 60 Minutes Australia showed that they enjoyed sharing activities like offroading and skeet shooting, they found they didn't turn out to have much in common.
They shared that for the first three days or so of their time together, they tend to get along famously. But after that grace period, Gavin and Robyn described their relationship as akin to war.
Everything Started From The Mix-Up
Although the boys spoke in general terms about how they differed and how that influenced the "wars" between them, the fact that they were switched at birth was also a factor in their drifting apart, specifically, how they both felt in the aftermath.
According to 60 Minutes Australia, Gavin wants to move on from the circumstances of their birth, while that's far easier said than done for Robyn. From his perspective, he was stuck between two different mothers who all but inhabited two different worlds.
Robyyen Still Loves Parker
Despite Robyn's admitted anger and resentment toward his birth mother, he expressed feeling a deep love for her and found it difficult to hang up the phone during their daily calls. And this feeling of longing has only intensified as he's gotten older.
As he told 60 Minutes Australia, "She's getting older now, she's starting to slow down. When's it my chance to actually start knowing my mom?" And while Gavin may not share these feelings, Robyn is nonetheless not alone in expressing them.
Parker Has Strong Emotions Towards Both Boys
Fighting tears, Parker told 60 Minutes Australia that while there are no specific triggers for her emotional pangs, some days find her missing Robyn more terribly than others. Nonetheless, that longing is as much an everyday experience for her on some level as it is for Robyn.
However, as she said, "I don't want to hurt Gavin with thinking that I love him less or something." Given these strong emotions, Parker was then asked whether the severity of the situation consumed her.
Both Boys Are Very Strong
In response, Parker said that she can't let her regrets and feelings of longing consume her. She said, "I can't be any good to them if I'm in pieces all the time. You've got to be strong, and they're strong."
She credited both boys for how they've sustained the dilemma that came to their respective families. In her eyes, they're both setting good examples of how to deal with an upsetting and complicated situation.
Gavin Looks Forward To A Good Life
As 60 Minutes Australia noted, Gavin was thriving both academically and socially at school. And he looked to his future with a confident and ambitious eye. When asked what he was hoping to see in the future, Gavin replied, "Basically, the whole 'good life, get rich, get famous.' The usual."
Although Gavin expressed feeling a little sad that he got to know his birth mother through the circumstances he did, he figured that this is simply how life goes. And that all anyone can do is to find a way past obstacles like this and let life go on.
Gavin Keeps His Distance From Dawkins
Gavin was also reticent to establish the kind of contact with Dawkins that Robyn did with Parker. Although part of him considered how nice it might be to share that kind of closeness, he also figured that would make the already messy circumstances of their intertwined lives more complicated than they needed to be.
As Gavin said, "If you have too much contact, the relationship starts going from a friend to now she's really becoming like my mother. And that would just, like, change the whole outcome of it."
Dawkins Wants A Relationship With Gavin
Although Gavin may have felt inclined to keep Dawkins at arm's length, she had a markedly different perspective on how to treat his adolescence. For her, this was especially true in light of the fact that by the time Gavin was 15, she hadn't seen him for two years.
As she told 60 Minutes Australia, "It's now become critically important for me to get to know Gavin on a one-on-one basis. And to strengthen the bond that is there between Gavin and myself."
Robyn Wasn't As Social As Gavin
Although Gavin was gregarious and popular at school, Robyn felt more withdrawn and isolated. He mentioned feeling lonely at school and not typically in much of a position to socialize with others.
He said, "I've had to go through life sorting out my problems. I've never had a lot of luck with friends." However, that hasn't meant that Robyn has felt completely unsupported in his life. And this came up when he was asked about Dawkins as a mother.
Dawkins Was Always There For Robyn
While it's understandable to suspect that Robyn's longing for Parker suggests some unhappiness with Dawkins's care, he indicated that this was not the case. Robyn credited Dawkins for being a good mother to him. He went as far as to say that she taught him the ways of love.
In his words, "She's shown me, she's guided me. She's been with me through thick and thin." As such, that made a central question for the entire situation difficult to answer.
If He Could Go Back, Robyn Would Reverse The Mix-Up
Given the complexities of Robyn's feelings about his life, he was asked whether he felt he could ever reverse the swapping again if given the chance. After some hesitation, he said that he would love to and shared his belief that Gavin would also love to.
However, he also had significant doubts that changing their arrangement after so much time had been spent like this would work. At least, he didn't think that it would work out for very long.
It Hasn't Been Easy For Dawkins
For Dawkins, combining the everyday struggle to survive financially with the challenges of being a single mother has often proved overwhelming. In addition to living with depression, she said that she's experienced two nervous breakdowns in her life.
However, she was quick to explain that she doesn't mention these struggles to garner sympathy. In her words, "More often than not, I've said to people, "I don't want your sympathy. I want somebody to listen, and I want them to understand."
Dawkins Supports Robyn
Given how they've bonded over the course of Robyn's life, Dawkins was asked how she would take it if the switch were to take place again. Specifically, if Robyn were to decide that he'd prefer to live with Parker.
And for Dawkins's part, she's both well aware of Robyn's longing and supportive of it. In her words, "I wouldn't stop him because I know that he wants to go and, I don't know, I suppose get to know where he really comes from."
If An Exchange Happened, Dawkins Would Want Gavin
However, that doesn't mean Dawkins would be willing to accept being left entirely alone as part of that arrangement. She said, "By the same token, I would also want Gavin here."
Yet, this answer didn't quite address the possibility of Gavin not wanting to live with Dawkins either. Dawkins mentioned that this possibility had already crossed her mind. Of course, there's a difference between acknowledging a scenario and being able to come up with a plan for it.
There Is No Point To Dwell On "What Ifs"
As Dawkins expressed, "I've also looked at it from that point of view, and I'll be quite honest with you. I've actually closed it out of my mind because I don't know how I'd handle it, I'll be very honest with you."
No matter how much she'd thought about it before, the answer she kept coming back to was the same. Dawkins wouldn't know how she would take that kind of rejection, so it seemed pointless to continue dwelling on that possibility.
Even So, Robyn Would Not Change His Life
Although Dawkins may have been reticent to face that scenario where both children decide they want to live with Parker, that doesn't make it any less likely to happen. After all, there's no reason why Gavin wouldn't have been asked about the possibility of reversing the switch-up any less than Robyn has.
Indeed, he has considered going back to Dawkins's home and decided that he doesn't have any strong desire to do so. Regardless of how accidentally it happened, he's content with the life he has and would not change it.
Robyn Is Moving On
Although Robyn also said he was happy, that answer didn't come quite as easily to him as it did to Gavin. Although he said he felt happy in a way, he also couldn't ignore the ways in which his life bothered him.
As he said, "Today's probably going to be one of the hardest days again. I mean, saying goodbye to my mom. It's not easy, it truly isn't." That pain hasn't lessened as he's grown, but Robyn thought he found a way to cope with it.
Robyn Is Looking Forward To A New Beginning
As Robyn added, "I've learned to live with it and to say to myself, 'I'll see her again.' And that's brought me through." Still, that doesn't make the goodbyes his family shares with Gavin's family at the end of their vacations any easier when they happen.
As he often does, Robyn tends to put a brave face on for these departures, saying, "I won't cry now, I'll cry later." Although his tone was jovial when he said this, he wasn't joking.
It Was Still A Difficult Decision
Robyn expressed feeling stupid for crying about the difficulties of his situation but acknowledged that this isn't anywhere near as ridiculous of a reaction as his more self-conscious impulses tell him it is.
For her part, Parker believed there would be a day when Robyn returned to her. Much like Dawkins, who couldn't imagine her reaction if a similar day never came for her, Parker described seeing that day as "non-negotiable." Given Parker and Robyn's clear feelings, the possibility seemed strong that things would turn out as they hoped.
Robyn Eventually Moved In With Parker And Gavin
Parker and Robyn would eventually see the day they both dreamed about. According to The Daily Mirror, the fragile dynamic between these two families changed permanently in 2004. Around that time, Parker had been encouraging Robyn to move to her home.
Eventually, Robyn did exactly that. The journey took him halfway across South Africa, but he permanently relocated to Pietermaritzburg before he turned 16. There, he lived with Parker, Gavin, and the rest of the family they had built together.
Gavin Did Not Move In With Dawkins
However, the fact that Gavin didn't return to Johannesburg in exchange meant that Dawkins was left without the child she had given birth to and the one she had raised and loved until he was 15. As far as she was concerned, the situation was a total loss.
As The Daily Mirror reported, she said, "I just want to know she's really happy with what she’s achieved. I mean, she's ruined people’s lives, there’s just no other way to look at it… she’s ruined mine, for starters."
