Parents of babies swapped 10 months ago finally meet

Oct 5, 2007, 0:27 GMT

Prague - Libor Broza was anxious as he headed to meet the couple who has been raising his child for 10 long months.

'My first impression: that's me. That nose. It is just impossible to describe,' the 29-year-old truck driver told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa in a telephone interview.

Ten months ago, Broza's 25-year-old girlfriend, Jaroslava Trojanova, delivered the couple's first child at a hospital in the town of Trebic, 170 kilometres south-east of Prague.

The doctors told the new mother that her baby weighed 3.3 kilogrammes, but the next day she learnt her daughter somehow weighed only 2.65 kilogrammes, Broza said.

The new parents were puzzled but also exhausted, so they let the matter be, bringing the baby girl home.

But the little blond Nikola was not taking after her brown-haired and brown-eyed parents, and Broza secretly underwent a genetic test to determine the baby's paternity.

'I thought: she is not mine, and I must get over it,' Broza said, describing his feelings upon learning that Nikola was not his biological daughter.

After he requested Czech courts to formally strip him of paternity, the whole family underwent a new round of DNA testing. And then came the shocking news.

'It was a terrible blow. I was shattered by it,' Broza recalled the moment, driving in his truck, when Trojanova phoned him that tests revealed Nikola was not their child.

He is determined not to let the hospital, which initially asked them to keep the mix-up under wraps, go unpunished.

'We will sue them,' he said. 'They can't get away with this.'

Broza would not disclose how much the family would seek, but another relative told reporters that they will demand 10 million koruny (500,000 dollars) in damages.

Meanwhile, social workers located Broza's biological daughter, named Veronika by the other parents.

And so the couple arranged to secretly meet the 'easy-going peers,' as Broza described Nikola's biological parents, after returning home.

'We will exchange the children. Although it is terrible, we want our child,' he said.

The couples also agreed to swap their toddlers' names.

'I have always wanted a Nikola. A psychologist told us that it should not be a problem,' he explained.

'For both families it is like having two children,' he said. 'I would not wish this to happen to my biggest enemy.'