That is not my daughter
Nguyen Thi Mai Hanh delivered her third baby about 43 years ago. At the time the hospitals were much less organized than they are today. In 1974 Vietnam was dealing with the effects of the war between the North and the South that killed about 3.5 million of their people and left much of the country devastated. In that frantic time, Thi Mai Hanh was delivering a baby as her family scrambled for regular food and shelter. She was exhausted and could not rush out of the hospital to take her baby home the day after delivery. After she gave birth to her third child she was weak and so the nurses let her rest. When a nurse came with a baby 12 hours later, she immediately feared there had been a mistake because the baby had the number 32 written on its feet while her baby’s number was 33. The nurse explained that the number had been blurred when the baby was being bathed, and that’s why it looked like a 32. Since all the other babies born on that day had left the center, she had to accept baby number 32. “The nurses insisted the baby was mine, but in my heart, I knew they were wrong. “My mother’s instinct told me that my baby was somewhere else,” Hanh said. She and her husband returned to the center three days later hoping someone would show up wanting to exchange babies, but to no avail. The couple named the baby Ta Thi Thu Trang, and chose not to share their concerns with anyone.
Hanh raised Trang amid whispers that she was the result of a love affair as she grew up differently from her other children, both in appearance and mannerisms. But their urge to shield Trang from public criticism somehow made them love her even more than their other children, she said. Her husband, who died 13 years ago, had told her to let it go because their family was happy regardless. But eventually she decided she needed to know the truth. She went to a DNA testing center in Hanoi in 2015 and the results confirmed her suspicions. She told Trang the result on her 41st birthday. Trang cried for three days. Trang was her parents’ favorite child and loved by her brother and sisters. “Even in my wildest dreams, I never thought I was not from their blood,” she said. But after finding out the truth, Trang and Hanh decided to start searching for their long-lost family members together. They shared the story on Facebook and it was picked up by various media outlets and received widespread coverage for some time last year, prompting the police to step in and provide DNA tests.
Thanks to the publicity they found their “new” family three months later living just a few kilometers from the city. Trang explained, “The woman who was switched at birth with me used to go to my school, but I had no idea.” Hanh said she and her biological daughter cried a lot and could not say a thing when they first met. “Now both of our daughters have two families,” she said, referring to the baby girl they took home all those years ago and raised as their own. The two mothers are pictured with Hahn’s granddaughter and the families now get together for festivals and anniversaries, she said.
Devastating DNA diversions
What do you call a man who invented DNA?
Gene.
I don’t always feel like I won the genetic lottery, but when I do…
I’m at Wal-mart.
Once I took a DNA test.
It was pretty hard, but I think I passed.
“Should I be concerned about eating genetically modified tomatoes?”
Tomato: “No”
November 12th Birthdays
1978 – Ashley Williams, 1961 – Cote De Pablo, 1982 – Anne Hathaway, 1992 – Macy Cruthird
1944 – Al Michaels, 1969 – Sammy Sosa, 1945 – Neil Young, 1980 – Ryan Gosling