Parents say they might have switched their identical twins at birth
Nicole Giamundo admitted in a now-viral TikTok video that she and her husband, Jordon Smith, just might have accidentally switched their twins shortly after they were born in Jan. 2014.
Responding to a video wondering how parents of identical twins would ever know if they mixed their children up, Giamundo said, "Hi, yep. Did that ... at least we think."
Chatting with TODAY.com from her home in Parker, Colorado, Giamundo explains, "I had just had an emergency C-section, and it seemed like everyone in town went into labor that night. So it was a long night."
Giamundo gave birth to identical twin girls, Adalynn and Nora, who were placed in separate bassinets. Whenever she or Smith picked up a baby, they made sure to place the baby back in the correct bassinet.
At one point, each parent held a baby and couldn't remember which bassinet they picked up the baby from.
Giamundo asked Smith, "'Who do you have?' And he's like, 'I don't know. Who do you have?' And then we kind of just stood there for a second." Exhausted and overwhelmed, the parents thought, "'Did we mix them up? Did we not mix them up? Do we put them back? What do we do?'"
The situation was complicated by the fact that Giamundo and Smith hadn't been dating for long before they became pregnant. When they found out they were having not one — but two — babies, they were living on opposite sides of the country and trying to make a long distance relationship work.
Nine months later, they were finally living in the same place, each holding a baby and wondering if they potentially switched their identities for life.
Giamundo and Smith ended up unswaddling the babies, checking their hospital bracelets and putting each baby back in the appropriate bassinet ... or so they thought. But to this day, they're still not sure that they made the right picks.
But that's not the end of the story.
Giamundo had been sitting at the kitchen table recording the TikTok video, and Nora, who had been in the bathroom nearby, overheard and demanded to know what her mom was talking about.
"We never really said anything about mixing them up or anything like that to them," says Giamundo. But because now 10-year-old Nora had already heard part of the conversation, Giamundo turned her camera back on while she explained to her daughter that she might have been switched at birth.
In the video, Giamundo explained to Nora, "We were tired and picked you guys up and didn't remember which bassinet we got you out of. So you may very well have been Adalynn at one point and now you're Nora."
"Thank God," Nora responded. "I didn't wanna be named Addie."
Giamundo also recorded the moment she broke the news to Adalynn, who responded, "I don't like that. I don't want my name to be Nora."
When Giamundo asked what Adalynn would do if she found out that she was actually Nora, Adalynn said, "I would scream bloody murder."
Though the girls may still look alike today, their interests have diverged. Adalynn is an adventurous and creative artist while Nora drives a Bandolero race car for the family's racing team.
But they still gravitate toward the colors their parents dressed them in to help tell them apart when they were younger: Adalynn likes purple and Nora likes pink.
Giamundo was touched by the girls' hilarious responses to their hospital story.
She says, "They love who they are and they don't wish to be anybody else. It made me feel really good that regardless of what potentially could have happened, they are happy with who they are now."
If there were some sort of test that the girls could take to determine if their parents really did switch them, would Giamundo want them to take it?
"Oh, yeah, we would do that for sure," she says immediately. "It wouldn't change anything. They would still be who they are now and we would just know that the sleep deprivation did get the best of us."
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
