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{{trope|wppage=Babies switched at birth}}
One baby, often a newborn, is secretly exchanged for another.
May be a living baby for a dead one, the son of a [[Blue Blood|rich family]] for the baby of a beggar, or an accidental swap in the hospital nursery. In any case, the problem is that the babies were swapped, and they won't find out until later in life. Usually, in the worst moment. Frequently, the finding ''is'' the worst moment.
Favorite of [[Soap Opera
Compare [[Moses in
This is impossible to subvert.
Someone who [[I Just Want to Be Special|fantasizes]] they were
[[Changeling Tale]] is an [[Older Than Print|older]] subtrope involving [[The Fair Folk|elves]] [[Invasion of the Baby Snatchers|snatching babies]]. They will often replace it with a [[Doppelganger]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime
* In ''[[
* In ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro
* The final arc of ''[[
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* ''[[
* It was retconned that [[The Flash|Barry Allen]] had a twin brother who was believed stillborn; however, the doctor actually switched his twin with another couple's dead baby to keep them from pressing charges for botching the delivery, and he was raised as Malcolm Thawne. When Malcolm realized this was one of the reasons for his [[Abusive Parents|terrible childhood]], he [[Start of Darkness|killed the doctor in a rage]], demanding to know why ''he'' was the one to be taken.
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== [[Film]] ==
* A similar theme is used in the 1988 comedy-of-errors film ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094739/ Big Business]'' with Lilly Tomlin and Bette Midler playing the mismatched sets of twins
* Parodied in the film ''Delirious'', where a man trapped inside a soap opera is outraged with the changes its current head writer is making. One of them is the show's idealistic heroine being revealed to have been switched at birth with the daughter of the rich villainous family that runs the whole town, causing her to INSTANTLY become exactly like them.
* ''[[The Omen]]'' began with an swap between a dead baby and a mysterious newborn.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* In an obvious nod to ''[[The Omen]]'', ''[[
** To be fair, they had to deal with three babies, not two; "a golden-haired male baby we will call Baby A," "a golden-haired male baby we will call Baby B," and "a golden-haired male baby we will call the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness".
* This is part of the plot of [[Mark Twain]]'s novel ''Pudd'nhead Wilson'', involving two sons of a white plantation owner, one by his wife and one by a slave woman, being switched at birth by the slave so her son could live a life of privilege.
* [[
* In "Lady Clare," a lengthy poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the titular noblewoman discovers that her nursemaid Alice is actually her biological mother, who had been the nursemaid of the real Lady Clare. When the earl's daughter died, Alice switched the infants and claimed the dead baby as her own so as not to deprive the noble family of their only child.
* In [[Andre Norton]]'s ''Jargoon Pard'', Kethan is switched at birth for a woman's daughter, because [[Heir Club for Men|only a son can inherit]]. {{spoiler|At the climax, this is revealed to the woman and his parents; they reveal that actually, they knew it for a long time. Kethan nearly [[Darkest Hour|despairs]] because his purported mother no longer wants him, because she can no longer use him. After the fight, however, his parents eagerly lay claim both to their biological son and the daughter they raised.}}
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* As was the protagonist of [[Roger Zelazny]]'s ''Madwand''. In the end the two changelings end up making war on each other.
* The fantasy novel Split Heirs involves a royal set of boy/girl triplets, where the girl, and younger boy triplet were supposed to be secretly sent off to be raised by the queens brother, while the firstborn boy was to be raised to be the heir to a warrior kingdom. A mix up occurs, and the girl is raised as a prince, and becomes a fearsome warrior, while one boy becomes a shepherd, and the other a wizard's apprentice. The culture of the story thought that multiple births meant the queen had been unfaithful, which would have meant her execution. Also, a girl would not have been able to inherit the throne, so the queen kept the girl's sex a secret {{spoiler|even to the girl herself.}}
* A lot of baby-shuffling occurs in ''[[
* In [[
* In ''Inconceivable'' by Carolyn Savage, a Switched At Implantation medical error at an in-vitro fertilisation clinic in 2009 leaves the author pregnant which a child which belongs not to her (or her husband, Sean) but to some other couple. Oops!
* At least two instances in ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''. In ''A Feast for Crows'', Mance Rayder's son is switched with Gilly's son in order to prevent Melisandre from taking advantage of his "royal blood" as a sacrifice to R'hllor. ''A Dance with Dragons'' reveals that {{spoiler|Aegon Targaryen is still alive because of a baby swap.}}
* The accidental switch of the Fries family's three infants for those of the Breeze family triggers the main action in [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s ''[[Podkayne of Mars]]''—even though the infants are never seen "on-camera" and play no part in the rest of the novel.
== [[Live
* In the Brazilian [[Soap Opera]] ''Por Amor'', a mother switched her newborn for the dead baby of her first daughter. The mother did that in order to relieve the bad news that her daughter became sterile trough her difficult birthing. When the daughter, the daughter husband, ''and'' the mother's husband (the baby's father) find out, they were less than pleased.
* An episode of ''[[Dinosaurs]]'' revolved around the possibility that Baby Sinclair had been Switched At <s>Birth</s>Laying. It's heavily implied that this is in fact the case (the other baby is even green, like the rest of the family) but [[Status Quo Is God|of course]] he ends up remaining with the Sinclair family.
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* On ''[[Road to Avonlea]]'' (broadcast in the U.S. as simply "Avonlea"), Felicity and her friend Sally were born on the same day with the same flighty doctor present. When they harass her about not having a mother, Sarah forges a letter from the doctor confessing to switching the babies by accident. Aunt Hetty catches on, but first suggests that they switch the girls back, since the mothers had earlier made a big point of her not being able to understand motherhood, having never given birth.
* ''[[Veronica Mars]]'' contains a rare modern example of this trope played straight. {{spoiler|Veronica discovers that her friend Mac was switched at birth with Madison Sinclair.}}
* ''[[One Life to Live]]'' is the baby switch headquarters of American soaps. In the early 80s, Karen Wolek switched her sister's dead baby for a living one, a switch that went on for ''years''. Later, Gabrielle switched Alicia's dead baby with Brenda's living son. In 2004, a major [[Crossover]] with ''[[All My Children]]'' saw Kelly from ''OLTL'' raising the child of Babe from ''AMC'', who in turn had best friend Bianca's baby. The most recent{{when}} involves Bess, an alternate personality of Jessica, who switched Jessica's dead baby for Starr's.
* Happened in an episode of ''[[Ghost Whisperer]]'', where the ghost of the week discovers she'd been switched at birth shortly after her death, and plans to tell the girl she was switched with, despite both their parents not wanting her to know.
* This trope is what [[Not Blood Siblings|prevents]] straight [[Brother-Sister Incest]] in the Korean drama ''[[Autumn In My Heart]]'': the main couple were raised as biological siblings, and in their teenage years, when their feelings become muddy, it's revealed that she was inadvertently exchanged with another baby girl because her older brother, a toddler back then, entered in the nursery and exchanged the name tags.
* Done on ''[[Neighbours]]'' when Bree is revealed to have been switched with another baby at birth.
* On ''[[The Dick Van Dyke Show]]'' Rob was convinced that Richie had been switched with another baby at the hospital, because the the hospital kept confusing Richie Petrie with Richie Peters (delivering the wrong flowers etc.) and baby Richie didn't look like either parent. That is, until he met the Peters family, {{spoiler|who were black}} resulting in one of the longest laughs in TV history.
{{quote|
'''Mr. Peters:''' And miss the expression on your face? }}
* ''[[Castle]]'' has an episode where two babies were switched at birth because one of the fathers knew that his child had an always-fatal hereditary disease.
* Used in ''[[The Amanda Show]]'' on ''[[Show Within a Show|Moody's Point]]''; the title character was apparently switched at birth with a child of circus performers, which the doctor [[Rule of Funny|explains casually to the family while eating a snack.]] Of course, [[Cut Short|the other side is never resolved]] [[No Ending|but this was probably intentional.]]
* Subverted in an episode of ''[[Kenan and Kel]]'', in which Kenan Rockmore thinks that he was switched at birth with another baby born at the same time named Kevin Rockmore. At the end, [[The Reveal|the other Rockmores are shown to be Asian-American.]]
* This is the central hook to the [[ABC Family]] melodrama ''[[Switched
* In ''[[Young Dracula]]'', Robin has a [[Changeling Fantasy]] that centres around the idea that he and Vlad were swapped at birth. They weren't, but Ingrid fakes a diary to convince everyone that they were. [[Hilarity Ensues]].
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* ''[[Calvin and Hobbes
== [[Theater]] ==
* [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] used (and parodied) this one frequently; it shows up in ''[[
== [[Video Games]] ==
* This was a major story point in ''[[Shadow of Destiny]]'', where {{spoiler|the two female characters in the game (one from the past, one from the present)}} turned out to have been switched at birth by {{spoiler|the "Homunculus" as part of his scheme to ensure that history turns out exactly as he wants it to}}.
* In ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]'', it turns out that {{spoiler|Natalia was actually not the blood princess of Kimlasca--the real princess was stillborn, and the midwife switched the infant with her daughter's child. To make matters worse, her real father was one of the Six God Generals, Largo the Black Lion.}}
* Revealed to be the case for {{spoiler|Battler}} in ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro
==
* Sal Walters, the [[Dark Action Girl]] of ''[[
* Twix in ''[[Namir Deiter]]'' was
== [[Real Life]] ==
* Modern, western hospitals go through ''extraordinary'' measures to prevent this from happening, after some well-publicized (and very expensive) cases that came to light with the advent of DNA testing.
** In Russia, it recently{{when}} happened to two infants girls. The families still see each others frequently, and the girls still say "Mama"! when they see the other's family mother. Who miss them actually.
** In ''[[Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction?]]'', this story was introduce as true: A woman discovered thanks to her premarital exam that her blood group wasn't like her parents's. She came to the hospital with her fiancé who was born the same day and at the same place in a confusing night (a new's year eve, during a tempest). The mess led the nurses to write the wrong sex on minute books. So she was switched at birth [[It's a Small World After All|with her own future husband, no less.]]
*** Believable if you consider the fact that people tend to marry those who remind them of their parents, and who better to remind you of Daddy than his own son, and of Mommy than her own daughter?
** As mentioned under Film, this happened to Kimberly Mays and Arlena Twigg which inspired the aformentioned TV film ''Switched at Birth''.
* Reproductive technologies, such as in-vitro fertilization, raise additional possibilities for sperm, eggs, embryos or zygotes to be Switched At Implantation. In the worst case, a woman could unknowingly give birth to a baby which has no DNA relationship either to her or to any existing member of her immediate family, breaking the [[Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe]] presumption, and raise that child as her own and her husband's own.
* Brood parasitism is a strategy used by certain bird species, most famously the Common Cuckoo, as well as some species of bee and wasps.
** This is a darker variant of this trope since there isn't any actual "switching" involved. The cuckoo chick simply hatches earlier than the other eggs (cuckoos incubate their eggs in their bodies longer than other birds to make sure this happens) and ''pushes the other eggs out of the nest to their doom''. This strategy only works because most birds are too stupid to tell the difference between a chick of their species and a cuckoo chick (who is sometimes larger than the "parents"). If the parents ''are'' smart enough to ditch the cuckoo chick, a bunch of adult cuckoos attack them according to what is seriously called the "Cuckoo Mafia Theory". Cuckoos are ''creepy''.
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[[Category:Older Than Radio]]
[[Category:Switched At Birth]]
[[Category:Kidnapping and Abduction Tropes]]
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