Story for the Week
We’ve all heard stories about babies who were switched at birth. When I was younger, it was obvious that I was very different from my siblings, so that was the joke in our family. But I have heard the story of the night I was born too many times in minute detail for it to be made up.
Dad was in the Air Force stationed in California. My older sister had taken her time being born, so my mom waited (almost too long) to tell my dad that she was in labor. As they sped to the base hospital, military security opened the gates without waiting for ID because in the middle of the night, the base hospital was the only place anyone was going. By the time they got my mother into a room, I was already on my way, making my entrance into the world at 2:36 a.m.
The doctor on duty was on his last shift before leave, and I was one of 18 girls born during his shift along with one boy. So because I was so different, my mom used to joke that she went to have a baby, and I was the last one left in the nursery so they had to take me home. Nineteen babies born in one night…things that make you go “hmm?”🤔
The worry about switched babies never crossed my mind with our daughter. Security measures are stricter now. Most times, babies are born right in the mother’s hospital room and stay in the room. Our daughter was born via C-section and given a wristband to match mine before she even left the operating room, and she also looked exactly like my husband (and nothing like me.🤣) So we would have noticed if they brought us the wrong baby.
My husband sent a newborn photo of her to his aunt in London. When she called us, the first thing she said was that she didn’t expect to see my husband’s face staring at her when she opened the email. Whenever I took my daughter for her newborn check-ups, the nurses at the doctor’s office told me that it was a good thing I carried her because that’s the only way they knew she was mine.
We were typical parents, taking a ton of pictures, and when our daughter was about three months old, we got a shot of her that really showed she and my husband were two of a kind. We happened to have a photo of my husband at about six months, and I put them side by side. Forgive the quality. My husband’s photo is 60+ years old, and my daughter’s was literally copied onto a regular sheet of paper, but I think you’ll get the idea.
She’s grown into a nice mix of the two of us. My husband’s heritage is Chinese, Indian, and British (although a lot of people think he’s Hispanic), and mine is a Heinz 57 mix of European countries, which basically means I’m very pale and burn to a crisp in about 10 minutes without sunscreen.🌞 The combination of the two of us, though, gave our daughter a skin tone right in the middle and the ability to tan instead of burning. She has my chin now and my big ol’ feet and long toes. But she still could be mistaken for not being mine. 😉
Mix-ups do still happen all over the world, even though most are caught quickly by hospital staff. I just finished a book that played on exactly this scenario, and it kind of made me glad the book wasn’t around when I had my daughter. I think I might have been terrified.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for Playing Nice by JP Delaney
416 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: July 28, 2020
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Ballantine Books.
Publisher’s Description
Pete Riley answers the door one morning and lets in a parent’s worst nightmare. On his doorstep is Miles Lambert, a stranger who breaks the devastating news that Pete’s son, Theo, isn’t actually his son—he is the Lamberts’, switched at birth by an understaffed hospital while their real son was sent home with Miles and his wife, Lucy. For Pete, his partner Maddie, and the little boy they’ve been raising for the past two years, life will never be the same again.
The two families, reeling from the shock, take comfort in shared good intentions, eagerly entwining their very different lives in the hope of becoming one unconventional modern family. But a plan to sue the hospital triggers an official investigation that unearths some disturbing questions about the night their children were switched. How much can they trust the other parents—or even each other? What secrets are hidden behind the Lamberts’ glossy front door? Stretched to the breaking point, Pete and Maddie discover they will each stop at nothing to keep their family safe.
They are done playing nice.
************
Main Characters:
- Peter Riley – father of two-year-old Theo, freelance journalist who decided to be a stay-at-home dad after he was made redundant
- Maddie Wilson – mother of Theo, works in advertising and chose to go back to work after giving birth
- Miles Lambert – father of two-year-old David, wealthy, owns an investment company, charismatic but overbearing
- Lucy Lambert – stay-at-home mother of David, very meek
It’s a good thing I started JP Delaney’s Playing Nice on a Saturday and didn’t really having anything important to do because I did not want to stop reading this book, even to sleep.
Told from the alternating views of Pete and Maddie, this book takes turns that would be unbelievable if you looked just at the start and the finish. But as this story progresses, it is so easy to see how situations get twisted when access to money creates opportunity and influence, how a dozen small decisions that you think you’re making for the right reasons turn out all wrong by the time everything escalates.
As the story begins, Pete opens his front door to greet Miles and a private investigator, informing him that the son he has been raising for the last two years actually belongs to Miles and his wife. They have been raising David but recently discovered that Theo and David were switched in the NICU at the hospital where they were taken after being born prematurely on the same day. While the Lamberts are pursuing a lawsuit against the hospital, they would like to have an amicable arrangement for the children and parents to be in each other’s lives.
The character development, as always with Delaney, is excellent. We get the backgrounds for Pete and Maddie interwoven seamlessly in their narrations, and we learn just enough about Miles and Lucy to speculate that maybe this situation won’t be as amicable as it first appears. In between some of the chapters, we are fed evidence logs from an investigation, and I really wanted to keep reading to see how everything was going to play out.
I never want to give away anything when I review a JP Delaney title, and I am going to continue that trend here. He is truly a master at creating situations where I can honestly say, “I would do that too!” and perhaps I would end up in the same horrible situations as the characters in his novels. This book kept me up late into the night, and it was so fast-paced that even I was surprised I finished it so quickly.
Mr. Delaney, thumbs up for another thrilling read!
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