Two Russian families are united by a terrible event more than a decade ago. Their newborn daughters were accidentally mixed up in the maternity hospital and grew up with the “wrong” parents.
In a tiny flat in the Ural Mountains, Yulia Belyaeva and her 12-year-old daughter Irina are looking through family photos.
One of the pictures shows Irina as a newborn baby swaddled in a blanket. It was taken the day mother and daughter left hospital. But 12 years on, Yulia Belyaeva has discovered that the baby she’d taken home – the daughter she’d thought she’d given birth to – is not her child.
“I found this out when my ex-husband refused to pay maintenance,” says Yulia. “I took him to court to prove that he was Irina’s father. We did all the DNA tests. But the results were a total surprise. Not only does my ex-husband have no biological link to Irina – neither do I.”
