Chance encounter uncovers twins' hospital mix-up 35 years ago

Twin girls separated at birth by a hospital blunder 35 years ago have found each other by chance.

Russian parents Galina and Vladimir Shilov had been expecting their second child in 1982 when she was 26. They already had a daughter named Anya but were not expecting twins.

Her daughters were born on 5 December, 1982 – first Uliyana, then a second girl named Ksenia.

But Ksenia had health issues and needed to be rushed to a children’s hospital.

Her parents left with just Uliyana. Ms Shilov added she saw Ksenia “just twice in the maternity hospital”.

“We were not allowed to visit our second baby in the hospital because of a flu epidemic,” the mum said.

Mr Shilov returned to hospital a month later to collect Ksenia, however, he was handed another little girl named Yana instead.

“The nurse opened her face and asked me, ‘Is this your baby?'” he said.

“Well, if it was given to me, it means it was mine. I did not have any single thought that I picked up someone else’s baby.”

However, it turns out he had taken home the wrong baby. Yana had been sent to the hospital due to problems with her birth weight.

Twins reunited

The “twins” grew up differently and did not look the same.

Meanwhile, Ksenia ended up in an orphanage at age four after Elena Azanova, the now 62-year-old who was believed to be her mother, was deemed unfit to care for her.

The mistake went unnoticed for 35 years and then was uncovered by pure chance.

A friend of Uliyana’s thought she saw her in in the Russian city of Perm, but it turns out it was actually Ksenia.

“My friend… called me and said, ‘I was driving past you, beeped, you turned your head but did not say a word or wave’,” Uliyana said.

“I replied in surprise – ‘How could you see me in the car when I am here at home watching TV?’”

Uliyana’s friend was shocked and said the woman was essentially her “clone” before forwarding her a photo of the woman.

Days later, the two sisters met for the first time.

Immediately they suspected Ksenia and Yana must have been swapped and agreed to DNA tests which confirmed Uliyana’s mother and father were the biological parents of Ksenia.

For Yana, her “entire world collapsed within one minute – her parents and sisters turned into strangers”, newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.

In contrast, Ksenia found the family she had longed for.

Uliyana, now married with two daughters, said she always thought of Yana as her sister, but they were never really close.

“We are very different,” she said.

“We have different interests and friends and when I met Ksenia, I immediately felt an invisible link with her. She was my relative.”

Yana and Uliyana ‘totally different’

Ms Shilov said Yana and Uliyana were “totally different”. Uliyana grew up playing with dolls while Yana “was like a little boy” and enjoyed being outside.

They persuaded themselves that one girl looked more like her mother, the other like her father.

“To be honest, from time to time I was anxious about it but I never told anybody,” Ms Shilov said.

“I did not even allow myself to think that Yana could be someone else’s daughter.”

Ms Shilov said the truth had been devastating for Yana. Her biological mum, Ms Azanova, can no longer walk or speak after a stroke.

“She [Yana] was so upset,” Ms Shilov said.

“We are trying to support her, to spend more time with her. She is our child, she will remain our daughter forever.”

Yana said her parents “held back this truth for a while” and were not brave enough to tell her after Ksenia was found to be Uliyana’s biological sister.

“On the one hand, I was very happy for my sister, but on the other hand I felt so lonely,” Yana said.

“We are all friends now. We often meet and communicate but still I am often very sad.”

The woman added she only considers Ms Shilov to be her mother. She has also met her biological brother, Dmitry, but added “we did not get on well”.

It is not known if she has met her real mum yet.

Hospital’s day in court for ‘taking childhood away’

Ksenia said she grew up in the orphanage and while Ms Azanova visited she “was not really interested” and “drank a lot”.

She’s blamed the “doctors’ negligence” for her childhood without parents. She was never adopted.

“I dreamed about a family so many times,” Ksenia said.

Dmitry added he and Ksenia protected each other at the orphanage and he thought of her as his “real sister”.

Ms Shilov said she was concerned about Ksenia and the childhood which was “taken away from her”.

This week a Russian court awarded compensation of more than A$20,800 each to Uliyana, Yana and parents Vladimir and Galina.

Ksenia was awarded more than $25,000.

The baby swap victims had asked for 10 times as much and their lawyer, Igor Savvin, said they are deciding whether to appeal.

However the hospital’s lawyer, Evgeny Kozminykh, slammed the result.

He said normally hospital lawsuits involve “tragedy” or someone dying or becoming disabled due to a doctor’s mistake.

“Here, in my opinion, we see a happy event,” he said.

“People found each other after so many years.”

There was “no evidence” the hospital was culpable in swapping the babies, Mr Kozminykh claimed, criticising the court verdict which held medics to blame.

He claimed the maternity hospital could be responsible.

“It happened 35 years ago and it is not possible to establish the truth now,” he said.

“Medical documents are stored for 25 years only.

“Everything has been destroyed now.”

With East2West/Australscope