The Decibel - How two Canadian women were switched at birth

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

In September 1969, two baby girls were born in a tiny hospital in rural Newfoundland, a few hours apart. A simple accident led to both of their lives being changed forever.Over 50 years later, the truth serendipitously revealed itself and their lives changed again. Journalist Lindsay Jones unravels the mystery of how these two women were switched at birth.This episode originally aired on September 26, 2022.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Hi, it's Nainika. Today, we're re-airing this episode set in rural Newfoundland, where the discovery of a decades-old mistake dramatically changed the lives of two families. It's an incredible story. Have a listen. That I didn't have the right baby, and I told the nurse that, I said, I don't think that's my baby. That's Ruth Lush. She's now 73, and she lives in Triton, a small town in Newfoundland. And for years, Ruth had this fear that someone had made a terrible mistake. And then I said, I tell myself, well, you're crazy. This is nuts. What are you going on with? You know? What is going through your mind? mistake. Freelance journalist Lindsay Jones has been looking into what happened to two babies in 1969 at a tiny Newfoundland hospital. This is The Decibel.

Lindsay, thank you so much for chatting with me today. Thank you for having me. So earlier this year, you were in Triton in Newfoundland. Can you just describe what that place is like, Lindsay? Triton is in central Newfoundland. And so to get there, you drive on a causeway onto an island and then another island. Driving along a little windy road right along the water, right along the ocean here. Wow, what a beautiful little place. Lots of crab pots and nets and buoys all hanging around those properties.

And Triton is right on the ocean. It's a beautiful little town with several different coves, and there's lots of snow crab fishing there it juts out into the middle of the Atlantic and it's right on the route of Iceberg Alley where the icebergs break off and float down from Greenland every spring oh wow Oh, wow. There's an iceberg. It says Iceberg Alley. Holy crap. I've never seen one like that. And when you were in Triton there, you spoke with a woman named Ruth Lush. Tell me about Ruth. So Ruth is from Triton. She grew up there and she married a local man named Wilford Lush. And she's very warm and chatty, maternal lady who is a pillar of her community. So Ruth loves making things for other people.

She's a prolific quilter and she loves taking care of her special needs son, Jason. She's constantly taking him and his friends on recreation trips and caring for other people in the community. And so September 24th, 1969, that was an important day in Ruth's life. What happened on that day? So the day before September 24th, 1969, Ruth went to the Springdale Cottage Hospital. She was having contractions and she was ready to give birth to her third child. Would it be okay to take me back to 1969? Do you remember that? I do remember clearly. I went to hospital. Well back then you didn't know if it was a boy or a girl so it was a little bit

really exciting you know wondering what I'm gonna get now and my baby was born. Ruth was excited she didn't know if she was having a boy or a girl. And as Ruth tells it, she gave birth to a baby girl early in the morning. And she named her Dora Arlene Lush. And a nurse brought her baby back to her, as they did at the time. They brought babies to the mothers every few hours. And Ruth looked down at the baby, and she thought, this is not the same baby that I had in my arms earlier.

I somehow felt that I didn't have the right baby, and I told the nurse that. I said, I don't think that's my baby. Oh, yes, that is your baby. You know, the changes overnight, the hair color changes and everything. It looks a lot different, you know. She told me that the baby didn't even smell like her baby. Well, there was something about it.

There was some reason I did not have that. I don't know what you would what you would call the motherly instinct thing or that sort of the babies were both blonde they were both about the same size there was only one ounce difference between the two babies as um I discovered through comparing the two birth records and the babies both had blue eyes so she just knew that this was a different baby. And so what happened then? So Ruth looked down at the baby and she said, well, I guess you're right. I mean, nurses and doctors had, they still have a lot of authority. And Ruth took her word for it. She was

older and in an authoritative position. And Ruth said, okay, I guess it is my baby. But that there was a gut feeling in her, this maternal instinct that she felt that she just couldn't let go of that her baby was somewhere else. And it would come up again and again. And she never forgot it. She never let it go. And so before she goes to bed every night, she prayed for all of her children. I would just lie in the bed, you know, and I would name out my children.

God protect them, you know, keep them safe. And then I'd say, should I have another daughter? God, you know, I don't. You know, protect her. Watch over her. But about 10 years ago, she was in a Costco and she was looking around at this at a woman who was talking to her youngest daughter. And she thought, I wonder if that's my baby. And she kept looking at her and and turning back and staring.

And then she said to herself, no, I'm just being crazy. Did she have any, I don't know, were there any clues or anything, I guess, to back up Ruth's ideas there? Her daughter Arlene, as a young child, blended in with the other children. As she got a little bit older, you know, there were differences. Arlene is quite tall compared to everyone in the Lush family. Arlene was the only redhead, but that wasn't that odd because there were other extended family members that had red hair. Arlene's personality was a little bit different as she got older. She was a little, she was more stubborn than the other children. You know, Arlene would describe herself as a bit of a rebel when she became a teenager.

I guess I think, you know, often if people have questions like this, a paternity test or a DNA test of some sort can often resolve these questions. Was a paternity test ever taken? So Ruth raised the idea of a paternity test when Arlene was about 11 years old. And when she raised that to Arlene and Wilfred, it caused a stir. People were upset and Ruth just decided to drop it. But then in January of this year, something unexpected happened. Ruth's eldest daughter had done an Ancestry.com test some years ago. So that was out there in the ether already.

And so this woman named Caroline, we are green, and she lives in Yellowknife. And she had gotten an Ancestry.com kit for Christmas from her husband. And her siblings, her elder siblings, had always said to her, you know, you're so different from the rest of us. Maybe dad isn't really your dad. And, you know, she didn't really want to go there until after her father passed away. But it had been several years since he passed away, and her husband wanted to get her something for Christmas. And so here she is finally with these Ancestry.com results popping up in her inbox while she's at work one day.

And so she clicks on it and she sees that she has no relatives from the community where she grew up. And the surname of the people that are showing up as her biological relatives are from the Triton area. So she sees on the Ancestry.com results that she has a full sister living in Halifax. And so she contacts that sister and they make the connection that this is likely the missing daughter. So as Tina tells it, the youngest sister in the Lush family, they called their parents, Ruth and Wilfred, and they said, we found her. And Ruth was just shocked. She started shaking. She wanted to know, you know, if her baby had lived a good life. And from there, just no one, no one's life has ever been the same since.

We'll be back in a minute. So, wow. So, I mean, after all those years, more than 50 years, Ruth learned that, I mean, that she was right and that the baby she was handed in 1969 was not the daughter that she gave birth to. And Caroline, so this is Ruth's biological daughter then. What's Caroline like? So Caroline is, she's warm and she's chatty. She makes everybody feel at ease. She's always doing nice things for other people. I mean, it is very obvious to me the two are related in that regard. She looks like her dad, in my opinion, though other people have picked up on, you know, similarities between she and Ruth. Yeah, it's funny how you describe Caroline is actually very similar to how you describe Ruth there, Lindsay. So that speaks to it as well. And what was Caroline's childhood like? So Caroline grew up, she was raised by an aunt, so not the mother that gave birth at the hospital on the same day. So her aunt, Toots Budgell, raised her.

The mother that gave birth in the Springdale Cottage Hospital wasn't taking care of the kids in a way that some of the neighbors expected. And a neighbor contacted Touts while she was living outside Newfoundland and asked her to come home. And so she moved home and eventually adopted Caroline and four other siblings. So Caroline was raised in a community an hour and a half away called Beachside. like there was no way that they could have crossed paths very often although Caroline worked at a restaurant in the town of Springdale as a teenager and all she can think about is did I serve my parents that I serve my siblings at some point and and no one knew do you have a sense of how Caroline felt when she was growing up? Did she feel like she fit in with her family there?

Caroline always felt like she fit in, for sure. She loved her mom and dad and she loved her life and she was very loved by her parents. So Ruth's biological daughter is Caroline. Arlene, though, is the other daughter in this story. Who was Arlene's biological mother then? So Arlene's biological mother is a woman named Jessie Rousel. And so she gave birth at the cottage hospital. She was 31 years old. Jessie was a free spirited woman. And she longer, unfortunately, with us. So Arlene didn't have the chance to meet her. Wow. And do we know what might have happened there at that cottage hospital that led to these babies being switched? Well, at the time, babies didn't room in with the mothers. The

mothers recuperated in a ward separate from where the babies resided in a nursery down the hall. And so a rotating crew of nurses and nurses aides tended to the babies in the nursery and brought them to the mothers. So when a baby was born, what was supposed to happen, according to nurses that I interviewed who worked at the hospital at the time was the babies were supposed to have an identity bracelet put on their ankle at the time of birth. Then they were cleaned and weighed down the hall in the nursery. So sometimes I heard bracelets can slip off or perhaps bracelets don't get put on. No one's suggesting that that happened, but there were also bracelets in the nursery in case a bracelet slipped off or in case a baby needed another one

put on. So, you know, there's a little bit of a footprint there of potentially, you know, of how things worked at the time. This is, I mean, I guess the big question here, Lindsay, is like, how could this have happened? How did it happen that these two babies were switched like this? Well, that's the question everybody's asking. And that's part of the reason the families came forward to me to tell their story, because they want some answers. They want to know how this could happen. They want to know why it happened. I reached out to government, to the health minister,

and asked if he would be open to doing a formal review. He said that he would look into it. I haven't heard an update about that. So, you know, we're pushing in that direction. We've talked about a cottage hospital in this story before, Lindsay, which is actually a term that I don't think a lot of people are actually familiar with these days. Can you just explain what a cottage hospital is and what this industry was? Sure. So the cottage hospitals were provincially run health care centers strategically placed throughout Newfoundland and they were in central locations so they could serve multiple different small fishing communities at once

and so you know one particular cottage hospital like this Springdale Cottage Hospital could have serviced more than a dozen different communities you know people would travel there to see a doctor a A lot of times, it was the first time people in Oakport, Newfoundland were able to see a doctor or a nurse was through the cottage hospital system. I guess I wonder, is this kind of mix-up common? Or like, have you heard about this happening anywhere else? So when people in the community started to hear about this case, other people came forward with their own stories of temporary mix-ups. So other women in the community told Ruth stories about being handed the wrong baby and, you know, oh, I had a boy,

but you gave me a girl or vice versa. And it was discovered early before any sort of grave switch could happen. So based on those, hearing those stories in the community, it certainly does make you wonder if there are more out there that we just don't know about. But it has happened in Canada before. In 2015, there were two cases, two different switches involving, you know, four men all together at a hospital in Manitoba. The hospital was run by the federal government and Health Canada did a formal review of what happened and how it happened. And they also offered undisclosed settlements to the men affected in those cases. And nothing like that has been done in Newfoundland.

That is what the families are pushing for. And, you know, we'll just have to see how the government responds when the story comes out. Yeah. I mean, this is quite a story. And I honestly, I can't even begin to imagine how emotional this is for everyone involved. I guess I wonder, you've been able to talk to these women. How is everyone coping with finding out this truth? Well, it's been really tough on everyone involved. Ruth and Wilfred just want to spend as much time as possible with Caroline and get to know her

they've been cheated of the chance to raise and get to know their biological daughter Caroline and her new siblings get along great she and Tina especially are like best friends now and Tina has wondered you know what did I miss out on I missed out on you know potentially having a best friend as a sister. Ruth has said to Arlene you know you will always be my daughter and I will you know always love you unconditionally. Nothing's changed in regard to Arlene I said Arlene will always be my daughter unless she decides that for me to back off and she decides that I can't be there no more. Yeah. But it won't be on my side.

I assure you that. Arlene is struggling with, you know, who she belongs to now. There are no new parents to meet. She found out that her parents are not her biological parents. And she's looking forward to getting to know these new siblings. And she hasn't met Caroline yet, but she's looking forward to meeting her. But it's all weighing on her. You know, it's a lot of the feelings going through her head and everyone else's head is what if what if this hadn't have happened and no one really has an answer to that this is a pretty incredible story lindsey thank you so much for for taking the time to go through it with us thank you

that's it for today i'm maenika ramaman-Wilms. Our summer producer is Nagin Nia. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. And before you go,

we're planning something special next week on The Decibel. We're doing science news. All week, we'll bring you some of the biggest, most interesting science stories that we could find. It's going to be fun and fascinating. Have a great weekend, and I'll talk to you then.