“How is that possible?!” I nearly screamed. “I’ve always been faithful. I’ve never been with anyone else!”

The doctor let out a heavy sigh.

“Yes, but what’s even stranger is this—you are not the biological mother of this boy either.”

Everything went black before my eyes. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“What are you saying? How is this possible?”

“That’s exactly what we need to find out,” the doctor replied. “We’ll redo the tests to rule out any mistake. Then we’ll consult the records to understand what happened.”

We repeated the tests. The results were the same. For two weeks, I lived in a fog. My husband stayed silent, watching me with suspicion, while I cried at night, holding our son tightly in my arms.

We began an investigation. We searched for old hospital documents, spoke to doctors and nurses who had worked there at the time. Much had been lost, but little by little, the picture became clear.

Two months later, we were told that in our maternity ward, there had indeed been a baby mix-up. Our real child had been mistakenly given to another family, while another boy was handed to us.

The most horrifying part was discovering that such cases had happened before at this hospital. The administration had tried to cover up their mistakes, but we found evidence.

I didn’t know how to go on living. The boy I loved with all my heart wasn’t my blood. But he was still my son.

My husband needed time to come to terms with it.

And somewhere out there, our real child lives—perhaps growing up in another family, just as foreign to him as ours was to the boy we raised.