When we’re born, we’re given a story, a life. We’re told who our parents are and what our name is. Some of us are given a religion to follow and all of us get a country to call our own. We spend the next few years learning to walk and talk. Followed by many years of going to school. Eventually, we go to college, get married, and have a family. What if one day you were told that your entire life was a lie? What would you do? Valentina Suman woke up one day and had to ask herself that exact thing.When both girls, Valentina Suman and Tatyana Muradyan, left the hospital to go home, things seemed to be a bit off with both of them. If you’re a parent, you know how trying things can when you first bring home your new baby, but this was different.
Both girls had an extremely difficult time eating. They also seemed to cry all of the time, but neither mother thought anything of it.
People in both families found the girls behavior a bit odd, but Tatyana’s brother, Anatoliy Lashtur, heard something unbelievable. What he heard would later change the course of both family’s lives.
People began to talk, but eventually, everyone just brushed it off and moved on. After a while, the Lashtur family made the decision to move across the world to the United States.
This neighbor knew both of the families, so she was able to watch the two girls grow up. She also knew of the problems that both families had. She began to believe the rumors and came forward to the Lashturs.
“As they grew up, I guess she could tell that the other kid looked a lot like our family and the kid that we had looked like their family.”
They began to search far and wide for the other family. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to locate them before they had to move.
Every so often they would return to Moldova, and when they did, they would continue their search. Finally, the searching paid off.
They were given the name Valentina Suman. Tatyana and her younger sister, Victoria, went to Facebook to search the name.
They sent Valentina a message asking her for her name and birthday, and when that matched up, they asked for baby pictures. Once they saw the pictures, the Lashturs believed the rumors to be true, and Valentina was their family.
So, Valentina wrote to a Russian television show that did DNA tests and they were invited on to the show! Just like they suspected, the DNA test showed that Valentina and Anatoliy were brother and sister!
Muradyan was able to meet her biological mother, as well! “It was one of those experiences that you know doesn’t happen a lot and when it does, you’ll never forget it. Everybody was crying,” Anatoliy said.
While in the hospital both mothers were staying in the same room. The girls were taken out of the room for a bath, and when they returned, they were given to the wrong mothers.
Approximately 28,000 babies are switched every single year. Luckily, these two families figured out what was going on and were able to come back into each other’s lives.
