After a terrible mix-up at the hospital, two baby girls found themselves swapped, going to each other’s families instead of their own. However, this story has a happy ending: the families actually raised the girls together, in one house, and they remain best friends to this day! Read on for the good news story you need this week…
Swapped After Birth
While the situation sounds scary – after all, both children were taken away from their parents – the outcome turned everything around. It all started on the night of December 31, 1998. That night, the mothers of Caterina Alagna and Melissa Fodera thought they held their own daughters. However, mothers Marinella and Gisella, both 23-years-old at the time, did not have their own daughters – they took home each others! You see, a mix-up at the hospital had occurred, and, on New Year’s eve, each mother departed home, carrying a stranger’s daughter.
There’s no excuse for the hospital’s mistake, but it’s easy to see how it happened: both mothers were the same age, the babies looked alike, and the little girls were only born 15 minutes apart. Three years later, Marinella went to pick up her daughter Melissa from nursery school – that’s when she started putting the pieces together. She felt shocked when, while picking Melissa, she saw another girl, Catherina, that more than a little bit like her daughter! And when she saw Catherina’s mother, Gisella, Marinella instantly recognized her from the hospital!
Suddenly, a terrible idea came into Marniella’s mind: what if their daughters had been switched at birth. Catherina looked and acted just a tad more like Marinella, while her daughter, Melissa, looked and acted a bit more like Gisella. Soon enough, both mothers and their daughters decided to get DNA tests, to prove the truth once and for all…
Big Loving Family
Fifteen days after the DNA test, the mothers had their worst fears confirmed. Neither of them wanted to think about the mix-up. “I challenge anyone to raise a daughter for three years then give her up over a simple mistake,” Melissa said in an interview with the Times U.K.. Of course, The Times asked a reasonable question: what did they do next? Believe it or not, the two families have moved in together all under one roof! In that time, Melissa and Catherina eventually did find out about the accident when they turned eight.
Since then, the girls have only had issues with their names. Thankfully, every other part of their lives was untouched and joyful. Well, they had twice more love! Mauro Caporiccio, who wrote a book based on the real story, also released a film by RAI TV. “The girls effectively grew up with four parents and eight grandparents, and the experiment worked…” the author of “Sisters Forever,” said. “Today they are more like twins than sisters and there is a kind of love which binds the two families.”
