On December 31, 1998, Italian women Marinella Alagna and Gisella Fodera gave birth to girls 15 minutes apart. At the maternity hospital, one of the nurses accidentally got the babies mixed up.
On the day she was discharged from the hospital, Gisella asked why her daughter was wearing the wrong clothes. The nursing staff explained that there had been a closet mix-up.
Three years passed. Marinella Alagna was picking up her daughter Melissa from kindergarten and saw little Katerina. The girl looked a lot like the woman’s two older daughters.
“I met Katerina’s mother, Gisella, while still in the maternity ward. I suspected something was wrong. Fifteen days later we had a DNA test, and I almost lost my mind. It was too unreal, just unbelievable,” recalls Marinella.
After learning about the switch in the maternity ward, the women found it impossible to switch children. “Three years of raising a daughter and then giving her up because of a simple mistake… We couldn’t do that,” Gisella said.
Marinella and Gisella came up with this solution: the daughters would be raised together. The girls grew up with four parents and eight grandparents, went to the same grade, and then went to college.
Caterina Alagna and Melissa Fodera found out they had been switched at birth when they turned eight years old.
