I’m sorry that Esther’s 96 year old mother had to go through that. It is said all the way around.

As to your real point, family secrets, it seems to me that the donor egg community can learn a lot from the adoption community in this area. I agree with you that secrets are almost always destructive. Keep up the good work.

I did think that the show portrayed your family as dysfunctional and I appreciate your setting the record straight. As I think my essay/blog illustrated, I well know that any of our families could be portrayed that way because none of us is perfect.

The purpose of my blog was to illustrate the destructive power of family secrets, which I think still rings true in your family’s story. While the tragedy of switching children at birth is not common, many families created by donor gametes (egg or sperm) are repeating the mistakes that your family made. While your mother was not sure and had little recourse, these families do know for sure and can tell their children throughout their lives in a loving and age appropriate manner.

I hope your sisters Marti and Sue, as well as both extended families, have made peace with this really difficult situation.

I am the youngest daughter of Mary K. and Rev. Norbert Miller, and youngest sister of Marti and Sue, of whom the This American Life episode “Switched at Birth” is about. I must tell you that you have it wrong when you say that my mother told Sue and Marti of her suspicions (about them being switched as babies) AFTER my father passed away. In fact, the radio episode noted that my father was alive at the time my mother wrote the letters to the girls and he lived six more years beyond that.

You should know that I take issue with the This American Life episode, concerning the baby switch, that portrays my (Miller) family, as you say, as “screwy”. The episode chose to skew the facts to make a more dramatic story for the radio and left out a lot of facts from the interviews that would have made it fairer to the Miller family. They chose not to tell you negative things about the McDonald family that may have put a different spin on the story. Ours (the Miller family) is a loving and nurturing one to this day. As we children grew we were also allowed to explore our many interests and hobbies, were encouraged to ask questions, and were encouraged to continue our education beyond high school. Both of my parents were college graduates, my father having gone to seminary after four years of college. My parents were open and tolerant of other religions, races, and socioeconomic groups. When our home was opened to missionaries, who spoke at our church, we got a great education about what was going on in the World. If you call growing up in an intellectual family who worked together in doing chores (teamwork is necessary in a large family) as screwy, then I would say that is just what the This American Life producers wanted you, as a listener, to think.

Dawn, you mention that your family consists of six people with very different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. I would say that as individuals each of my siblings too would have differing views of what it was like growing up in a large family. Because of this, I know that one of my siblings viewed her youth as more difficult than the rest of us viewed ours and unfortunately it was this sibling’s letter to Sue, which was used in the show to skew it in the direction they saw fit, which I saw as detrimental to my family.

You must also realize that when my 96-year-old mother was interviewed, she was badgered mercilessly until she said what they wanted to hear. After the interview she was very distraught.

You say “the problems that ensued were exacerbated by major dysfunction in the Miller family”. I would take issue with that statement. Any “major dysfunction” that you perceived was put there by the interviewer. Perhaps many listeners will not understand what it was like for a married woman in the 1950s, with six children under the age of eleven, to act on something on her own without the support of her husband (who couldn’t believe it had happened). In my mother’s opinion it wasn’t an option, no matter what Mrs. McDonald said. Perhaps Mrs. McDonald had options not available to my mother, but since the hospital’s baby nurse at the time didn’t believe it (as she adamantly said 43 years later when asked), the doctor didn’t know about it, and DNA testing wasn’t available, sorting it out at the time may have been impossible and possibly would have labeled my mother as a nutcase for the rest of her life. Also, perhaps you did not grow up in the 1940s and 1950s and so you don’t understand that children then did not interfere in their parent’s lives by presuming to tell their parents what to do in any given situation.

The This American Life episode claimed that the sister I grew up with, Marti, was different than the other Miller babies right off the bat. This is not true. Both babies were dark-haired as were both of the mothers. All of us Miller babies had dark hair when we were born and almost all of us turned blonde after we lost that baby hair. Marti was no exception. Being born four years later, my parents saw many similarities between Marti and me as we grew up. Marti also had a space between her two front teeth like my mother’s. Most families can probably note differences between siblings and so a few differences wouldn’t necessarily point to a baby switch.

Although the This American Life episode would like you to think that my mother was positive about the switch, she was not. In fact, she was under sedation during the birth (the norm back then) so didn’t see the baby she birthed in the delivery room. Back in their hospital rooms she and Mrs. McDonald were always given the same babies, albeit, the wrong ones. It was mostly a mother’s intuition that gave her the suspicion, along with a weight difference that could have been explained away as the loss of weight a baby often suffers after they are born.

Esther