Decades After Two Babies Were Switched At Birth In Newfoundland Families Are Weighing The Consequences

The chatter froze in the car as it neared the abandoned Springdale Cottage Hospital on the edge of Green Bay in Newfoundland and Labrador. Ruth Lush averted her eyes as the SUV drove past the three-storey building in May this year. “This is where my life changed forever,” she said, tears welling up behind her dark glasses. Mrs Lush, 73, had arrived at the country house hospital, now closed, more than half a century earlier – pregnant and carrying a white suitcase. On the morning of September 24, 1969, shortly before dawn, she gave birth to a baby girl whom she named Dora Arlene Lush, named after a cousin of hers. One of the days Mrs. Luce spent recovering in the hospital, a nurse gave her a package. Look at the kid. This was not the same baby she had hugged and kissed the day before. She didn’t even smell like her baby. “Oh, yes, that’s your baby,” Ms. Luce recalled the nurse assuring her. “They change overnight. Their hair color changes everything. They look very different.” Mrs. Luce looked at the infant: I guess the baby has changed, she thought. She returned home to the fishing town of Tritona, believing that the baby she brought with her was her biological child. But every once in a while, maybe every few months, something deep in her cells told her she missed her baby. Over the years, she confided this instinct to her sister and a cousin. Later, she told her eldest daughter and niece. She tried to speak to her husband Wilfred, but he was not listening. In their little white house in Badger Bay, Arlene was noticeably different from the Lushes’ other two daughters. She was stubborn with red hair and freckles, while the others were blond, milky and mild-mannered, jumping in to wash the dishes without complaint when their mother asked. One day, when Arlene was about 11 years old, Mrs. Lush brought up the idea of ​​a paternity test to her and Mr. Lush, but they both refused. So he left it. But he didn’t forget. At night she sometimes asked God if he had another daughter out there. “Protect her. Watch over her,” she prayed from her bed overlooking the bay. It was just a mother’s intuition – one that without any proof was just her. But more than four decades later, the evidence would find her. Arlene Lush, shown at home near Golden, BC, grew up in Triton believing that Ruth and Wilfred Lush were her biological parents. Todd Korol/The Globe and Mail Ruth and Arlene Lush through the years. Arlene’s biological mother died in 2008, a few years after the potential biological father died. Courtesy of Ms. Weir-Greene’s family at the age of 5 and at her wedding to Terry Greene, whose gift of a genealogy kit helped initiate the family reunion. Courtesy of the family It was snowing lightly in Yellowknife when Caroline Weir-Greene saw the email pop up in her inbox in January. They were the results of the genealogy kit her husband had given her for Christmas. A small part of Mrs. Weir-Greene has always wondered about her origins. She knew her mother was really an aunt who adopted her as an infant, but growing up, her three older sisters had always pointed out how different she was from them. She was a fine linen two-shoes raised among a pack of wild brunettes. The sisters teased her: Maybe their dad wasn’t really her dad. It had been a few years since Mrs Weir-Greene’s father had died, so she thought: ‘Well, why not?’ Ms. Weir-Greene, a healthcare administrator, clicked on the e-mail. A strange list of last names appeared, none of which belonged to people in her family. They seemed to be from Triton, a town more than an hour away from where he had grown up in the small community of Beachside. That’s strange, he thought. Even more surprising was that he had a full sister who lives in Halifax. Ms Weir-Greene sent her a message and the woman immediately replied with a question. “Were you born on 24 September 1969 at Springdale Cottage Hospital?” “Yes!” Ms Weir-Greene replied. “I think I should call you,” replied the woman, who was Mrs. Luce’s eldest daughter. (He did not want to be interviewed or identified.) Wilfred and Ruth Lush in Triton. Greg Locke/The Globe and Mail Shortly after, she and her other sister called their parents. He asked if they remembered he had done an AncestryDNA kit. “You found her;” replied Mrs. Luce. “Thank God. Thank God. I’ve prayed all these years that I’d still be alive when you find her.” As the news sunk in, Mrs. Luce began to tremble. She learned that her biological daughter had been raised in a fishing village an hour away and that Arlene’s birth parents were both dead. Mrs. Luce staggered into the kitchen in shock. She looked at Ms Weir-Greene’s social media and looked at photos of her missing daughter: as a toddler with plums in front of the Christmas tree. with cornrow bangs and blue eyes in a school portrait. on her wedding day in a sleeveless dress. Mrs. Luce wanted to reach through the pictures and squeeze her. It was a relief to see her daughter have a good life, but she also felt despair. She and her baby had lived a world apart. That night, Mrs. Luce texted Arlene and asked her to call. “I just heard news of what I’ve been saying all your life,” Ms. Luce told her when they connected by phone. “After all these years, I was proven right.” Arlene, stunned, slipped on the kitchen floor of her home in Golden, BC “Do you know if my mom and dad are alive?” asked. “I don’t think so, Arlene,” said Mrs. Luce. Arlene Lush and her older brother Randy in a family photo. Courtesy of the family For the next week, Mrs. Luce couldn’t stop crying. Her sobbing continued so loudly and for so long that her grandson, whose room is next to hers, began to sleep on the couch. An active woman who volunteers at church and at her disabled son Jason’s recreation group, she struggled to stay in the daily routine of caring for others. That winter, her only reprieve was to focus on preparing to meet her new daughter. She disappeared into her small sewing room off the kitchen, giddy as a mother in the days leading up to childbirth, desperate to make a quilt in time for Mrs. Weir-Green’s arrival from Yellowknife that spring. “A daughter is a blessing,” Mrs. Luce embroidered in pink. “Made with love for sweet Caroline 2022.” Like any news in a small town, word of the change spread quickly. Others began to share their own shocking experiences at Springdale Cottage Hospital. Outside a breakfast fundraiser one morning, Mrs Lush heard the story of Joan Budgell, who was confused when a nurse handed her a pink parcel. “I had a boy,” she told the nurse, joking that she wanted a girl but didn’t have one. At first, she said the nurse didn’t believe her, but she eventually disappeared to investigate and returned a short time later with Ms. Badzell’s son. Another time, Ms. Lush was grocery shopping when a lady who knew about the switch said that another Triton woman, Jenetta Burton, who is no longer alive, also had the wrong baby at Springdale Cottage Hospital. She was blessed with a girl and even had a boy, her daughter Betty Snow confirmed. A family member then told Mrs Lush about another confusion in their extended family, which was immediately apparent and corrected, because the baby the nurse gave the woman looked so different from her own. (No woman would discuss that with The Globe.) “Oh my god, how common is this?” asked Mrs. Luce. “How many times has this happened and no one knows anything about it?” Caroline Weir-Greene with her parents and siblings Randy Lush, left, Tina Lush-Snow, right and Jason Lush, seated. Greg Locke/The Globe and Mail The former Springdale Cottage Hospital, which operated from 1952 to 1977. It became the Green Bay Health Center until services moved to a new facility in 2021.Lindsay Jones/The Globe and Mail Newfoundland’s cottage hospital system was once touted as the new dawn of health care, providing hospital care and doctors to the scattered rural communities that wrap around the province’s rugged coast. For many people living in hundreds of fishing communities, going to the country hospital was the first time they had seen a doctor or nurse. People paid a small fee to access hospital and medical services, part of a progressive form of publicly funded medicine that predated similar initiatives in Canada, according to medical historian Heidi Coombs of Memorial University. “It was one of the first forms of socialized medicine in North America,” he said. Many women sought maternity care each year at the same cottage hospitals, strategically located to serve many different communities. During their operation between 1936 and 1977, thousands of babies were born in them, Dr Coombs added. The last of the 19 cottage hospitals to open was Springdale Cottage Hospital in 1952. It was midnight on Sept. 24, 1969, when Jessie Rowsell, a 31-year-old Beachside woman, arrived at Springdale Cottage Hospital, according to birth records shared with The Globe and Mail. Jessie Rowsell, Arlene’s biological mother. Courtesy of the family Mrs. Rowsell, a free-spirited woman who partied hard and fished with the men, gave birth to a baby girl shortly after 5 a.m. At the same time, Ruth Lush was in labor, according to…