Parents: Losing a Child - Twice

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For Ernest and Regina Twigg of Langhorne, Pa., the death of their nine-year- old Arlena after heart surgery last month was heartbreaking -- on top of anguish that began after presurgery tests of Arlena's blood revealed she was Type B positive. The Twiggs both have Type O blood, which meant that Arlena probably had not been their natural child.

Devastated by this news, the parents reviewed oddities surrounding their daughter's birth at Hardee Memorial Hospital in Wauchula, Fla., on Dec. 2, 1978. After delivery, their pink-cheeked infant scored a perfect 10 on the Apgar health rating. Nevertheless the baby the Twiggs took home suffered from a heart abnormality. The child's weight was allegedly changed from 8 lbs. 6 oz. to 6 lbs. on the birth certificate, which also recorded Arlena's blood type as O. A battery of genetic tests proved that the child the Twiggs had raised for ten years could not have been their daughter. Last week the family filed a $100 million lawsuit against the hospital, three doctors and a nurse, charging that they had switched the healthy newborn with a sickly infant whose mother had already relinquished it for adoption.