If there's anything we've learned from the people we see on Jerry Springer and Maury, it's that the truth always comes out eventually. We've seen DNA tests reveal that the man in a relationship is not the father, but perhaps the most inopportune time for the truth of legitimate paternity to be revealed is during the birth of the child itself.
#1 The Tests Don't Lie
When I was a medical student, I had a baby born with hydrops, which is where a baby gets two bad copies of a red blood cell gene, one from each parent. The baby passed away shortly after birth. Parents came in for genetic counseling and testing and it was revealed that the woman’s husband did not carry the alpha thalassemia gene. The couple asked what the chance was that another baby of theirs would have this condition. The doctors were honest and told them “zero percent.” They left it at that.
#2 The Third Guy
I'm a midwife. I once had a woman come to my clinic unannounced (she wasn't my patient but I'm NHS, so saw her anyway). She had a man with her and he knew she was about three months pregnant, but she hadn't come for any antenatal care. I asked if she'd had intimate relations the night before. I looked at the partner as the mom said yes and he said, "Nothing to do with me—I'm just the baby daddy."
Turns out, she had a new boyfriend at home; this was just the guy she'd been with three months before. I popped her up on the table to examine her and straight away had to tell her that she was actually about five months along, but I would arrange a scan to confirm. The dude just got up and walked out. Turns out, there was a third guy five months ago.
#3 Not My Baby
When she was single, she slept around a LOT. She admitted to me before we started dating that she had lost count of the number of guys she had been with. But she was a great person and loyal once she was in a committed relationship. And heck, if I was good at talking to women, I'd sleep around all the time too. Nothing wrong with it as long as you're safe and the other person knows what to expect going into sleeping with you. The problem is, she got pregnant while we were together, and our doctors confirmed the baby wasn't mine.
#4 Three Potential Options
I had a mom-to-be who had narrowed the options for her baby daddy down to her top three. She was having a C-section and didn't understand why all three potential dads couldn't come into the operating room. She then asked if we could rotate them through, and maybe she'd let the one that was there when the baby came out be the "real daddy." It took all my professionalism to smile politely.
#5 No Chance
A nurse friend of mine told me about helping with a vasectomy when the doctor saw that the patient, a married father of two children was clearly infertile and would have been all his life. Due to the man taking Valium before the local anesthetic the doctor made the guy come back for a follow up where he had to explain the man's medical condition to him. No idea what the fallout was.
#6 Uncanny Resemblance
My brother's best friend didn't resemble his father while growing up, so he became more and more suspicious. The father eventually did a DNA test (when my brother's friend was 11 or 12) and found out he was not his father. The parents split up and the older daughter, who was 16 years old, went with the father. She resembled him, so he was sure about her.
#7 Keeping A Secret
We now know that my brother (half brother now, I guess) is definitely not my dad's. My dad let me know now, like 10 years after separating from my mom. He explicitly told my sister and I that we should under no circumstances mention it to my brother because he would be heartbroken. My dad still goes above and beyond to make sure my brother is happy. It's just incredible to watch.
#8 Leave It At That
Before meeting my mom and having me, my dad had a son with a girl who worked at my grandad's bar. My dad was only 17 and apparently, my grandad encouraged him to date this girl. My mom is convinced that he isn't the dad and that my stepbrother is actually my grandad's kid. My grandad set my dad up so people wouldn't find out he'd been sleeping with an underage employee. My mom has brought this up with my dad a few times but he refuses to get a DNA test. He just says, "He's my son" and leaves it at that.
#9 It's In The Eyes
I had a doctor that thought my boy wasn't mine because he came out blonde with blue eyes. I'm half-native with dark hair and dark green eyes and my dad is a blonde, blue-green-eyed dude. My wife is a very dark brunette and her dad is a blonde, blue-green-eyed dude. It got grandfathered in, he is tested genetically as mine, but the doctor was very, very iffy.
#10 All Mine
This happened to me actually. No one said anything to me about their suspicions. Two years later, it comes out that my daughter wasn't biologically mine. By that time, I only saw her as my daughter and nothing else. After months of depression and confusion, I worked it out where I left the mom and adopted the little girl. She's raised as my daughter and I don't see her any other way.
#11 Taking Precautions
My wife grew up in a really small town but wasn't born there. When she got her first crush on a boy and told her best friend, the friend was like, "Did you talk to your mom yet?" Apparently, adultery was so widespread in this area that it was common practice for girls to talk to their mom about crushes and who the parents were so they didn't end up dating their half-siblings...
#12 Three Sons, One Ex
My mom's friend has three sons to her ex-husband. Two of them look like him, but the second one looks a lot like the man she left her husband for... Of course, they didn't get together until AFTER she divorced her husband... It doesn't help how her new partner very clearly has a favorite kid. The first husband's child support bill most certainly includes the third child though...
#13 No Happy Ending
When my wife was in the hospital giving birth, there was another girl in the same room. Her husband was ABSOLUTELY in love with her and their soon-to-be-born son. I spoke a lot with this guy—we talked about how we were going to make our kids play together and so on. After birth, I never saw him again but I saw the child. NO WAY IT WAS HIS. By the time she was in the hospital, he moved out and filed for divorce. She tried to sue him for child support and won. He left the country and doesn't pay. She is struggling with huge financial problems (my wife still has contact with her). No happy ending here.
#14 Genetics Is Weird
My husband is a surgical technician. Years ago, he helped deliver a baby via emergency C-section. The baby was black and born to two very white parents. The dad freaked out and left the hospital with the mom in tears. The doctor convinced him to get a paternity test and he did end up being the father. Genetics is weird.
#15 A Heartbreaking Scene
There was suspicion before birth and the baby was clearly another ethnicity. The dad was asking how to get paternity testing throughout the night (most of us were not 100% sure of the process so he just kept asking everyone if the hospital could do it for him). Honestly, it was just sad. Birth is usually such a happy time, and so to watch a relationship quietly crumple and witness a child born into an unstable situation is just so heartbreaking.
#16 Clear As Day
I worked in a restaurant right after high school and there was a couple who worked there too. When the girlfriend got pregnant, she dipped out on him and moved back to her family in Alaska. After a month or so, the boyfriend got enough cash together to follow her. He dropped out of college and got a job on her dad’s fishing boat to support his new family. Months later, the baby was born and it became more obvious why the girl took off... because they’re both white and that baby was black.
#17 A Deeper Issue
I work in an NICU and frequently babies will come down to our units accompanied by their father while mom is still getting stitched up. Usually, the time when fathers will question us about how to do a paternity test or ask us questions like, “Does this baby look half black to you?” or, “Would you say this baby could be mine or no?” We’ve also had an occasion where mom has admitted to us the dad wasn’t baby’s father but we are not legally able to say anything so we just have to pretend we know nothing and submit a social work consult to look into the situation a bit more.
#18 Jumping To Conclusions
There was a white couple who had a black child. When the baby was born, the husband tried to divorce the mother. The court ordered genetic testing to prove the mother's case and it was indeed the man's child, the skin tone was simply a different color because of unknown family history on one of their sides. It doesn't help anything or anyone to jump to conclusions.
#19 Early Panic
African American babies usually are much lighter skin right after birth and they tend to get a little darker. The nurses usually warn the fathers about this but I guess no one had told this guy. We were in a C-section and the baby came out significantly lighter than the father. We all saw his face drop. Thankfully, the nurses saw it and told him that the baby looked exactly like him. He laughed about it later.
#20 That's Rough
A woman came to the ER with abdominal pain. She was there with her girlfriend. We ran a pregnancy test per-protocol... Don’t ever trust a patient when it comes to their history. So I got to break the news to this lesbian couple that one of them was unexpectedly pregnant. And, yes, I tried to discretely tell the patient the news alone, but she INSISTED that anything I had to say should be done so in front of her girlfriend. Okay, but I don’t think that was the prize she was expecting. The baby-daddy showed up. Commotion ensued. Security had to get involved when the girlfriend started attacking the baby-daddy.
#21 A New Parent
A teenage mom brought her newborn to the ER to be evaluated for something fairly minor (she was a new parent, so she didn’t really know what she was doing). There was also this teenage guy in the room, so I asked what his relationship was to the patient. He said he was the stepdad. Apparently, he had been dating the mom for about a month (the baby is about three weeks old). It took me a few minutes to wrap my head around that one. For his own sake, I really hope that guy didn’t sign the birth certificate.
#22 The Odd One Out
My cousin has dark skin. Like, our entire family is pasty white, but he looks Hispanic. It was a joke for a LONG TIME in my family, including between him and his dad. They'd call each other "alleged father" and "alleged son." Anyway, my aunt and uncle got into the whole Ancestry.com thing like 10 years ago and turns out my aunt's great-grandfather was black. She was pasty white like us, but apparently, her mom had darker skin too but just looked southern Italian (which she also was).
#23 Out Of Their Hands
Our NICU does not allow paternity testing to be done inpatient and some of our babies stay with us for three to six months depending on their gestation. We’ve had a few long and awkward waits for babies to get discharged before we could find out who the dads are. The two most recent cases were babies born at 23- and 25-week gestations, with both kids having three possible dads. None of the potential dads stayed to find out if they were the father. It’s so awkward for the staff.
#24 High Suspicion
Not a doctor but I worked in adoptions. A couple showed up wanting to discuss adoption. She was so obviously pregnant. The catch: she and he both insisted that they had never had intimate relations of any kind... only “heavy petting” stuff. I don’t know what happened because they never came back. my assumption was that she had slept with someone, just not the man she was in a committed relationship with.
#25 A Tragic Outcome
This couple had been married for only a few months. A month or so into the marriage, the lady had told him that she was carrying someone else's child. The husband was okay with the pregnancy as long as the child was given up for adoption. The twins were born and the mother passed away birthing them. The twins were given up for adoption to an orphanage that had associated itself with the hospital.
#26 Making Excuses
I was a postpartum nurse for several years. I had several dads say the baby wasn’t theirs because the baby wasn’t black enough. It takes a few days for the babies pigment to darken; that's I was taught by a senior nurse. But you could tell these men were just looking for any excuse to ditch out on the baby. Very sad.
#27 Recessive Genes
My wife and I adopted a set of embryos and my wife birthed them. The genetic parents are Chinese and Korean. My wife and I are of European descent. We let the doctors know, and they all agreed to not tell one of the doctors in training. When he would come to inspect the kids, he would look at their eyes, nervously glance at me, then do his exam and quietly walk out.
I asked him a few questions about why they had such dark hair when my wife and I are lighter haired. He responded about grandparents and recessive genes. Pretty good future doctor. On our second to last day in the hospital, the staff told him and he was very relieved. He was scheduling a chaplain visit for us.
#28 The Worst News
I was a nurse for a urologic surgeon, so I saw lots of vasectomies. A guy came in all ticked off that he had gotten his wife pregnant after his surgery. He had never originally followed up after the procedure. The doctor had him leave a sample to look under the microscope. He went back to the exam room and told him his surgery had been successful. The guy just walked out.
#29 Cheater, Cheater
A neighbor—Caucasian couple. The woman gave birth to an obviously African American baby girl. It confirmed our suspicions that she cheated. She’s not the cheating type and he’s a horrible guy. Their first kid is special needs but is able to keep up in school. The little girl is now three and so freaking precious. She’s so sweet, cute, well-adjusted, and just seems like a good human.
#30 The Rh Factor
I read an article several years ago about a doctor who was involved in the studies about the Rh blood factor in the late 1930s or early 1940s. The study took place in a New York maternity hospital and was done with married couples. Blood samples were taken from newborn babies, the mother, and father, and tested. In about 10% of the cases, the results of the blood test for a couple didn't match what the Rh factor should have been. The doctor went to the mothers alone and asked if the husband was actually the father. Most of the women admitted the husband was not or he might not be. This was back in the 1930s or 1940s with married women.
#31 How Blood Types Work
I had a close-ish call story. My wife and I make jabs at each other over our blood type. She's A-, I'm A+, so I like to say mine is better because I got an A+. Anyway, when my twins were in the NICU, this came up and we asked what the blood type was. They said O (I can't remember + or -). We both looked at each other confused, and the doctor came over immediately to explain how this is easily possible. Basically, we are both AO type which just comes out as A in the test. We both passed on the O, and voila.
#32 Amazing Humans
My husband has a son we know isn't biologically his. The biological mom cheated, acted like nothing ever happened, and put all her eggs into my husband's basket. The biological dad is a piece of garbage human being, so we decided not to ever say a word about it unless there's a medical issue where he would NEED the biological dad for some reason. The biological mom has no idea we know. We don't care. We love that boy, and we would never want him to think we love him any less than we do. So he is ours and we raise him exactly like our other kids. Honestly, I forget about it completely until I come across something like this. I'd hate to think of a world where he couldn't be our son.
#33 Personal Vendetta
I wonder what the reaction was for my partner's mom and her husband, who isn't the father. She knew early on but waited to tell my partner until he was 27. His biological dad has been living down the block wanting to be apart of his life the whole time, but the mom made certain that didn't happen. She even denied his sisters when they tried reaching out. Some women, man.
#34 Everything's Ruined
I fell down a rabbit hole a few weeks ago reading about that girl who was in TOSH.0 because of that farting video with her brother. She had a baby and the alleged father firmly believed it was his until a few weeks after the birth when the baby’s ethnicity became very obvious... It was black. I had to scroll really far through her Twitter to find it, but it’s quite sad. The would-be father was super invested.
#35 The Two Cousins
Before I met my husband’s two cousins, he explained to me how his uncle had got with their mother during an ‘overlap period,’ and they always knew there was a chance the older girl might not be biologically his. Yet, nobody in the family wanted to know for sure—as far as everyone was concerned, she was his daughter and that was that. So I met the cousins. My husband is Asian. His uncle is Asian. The younger of the girls is clearly half Asian. The older one, with her white skin, blue eyes and fair hair, looks very much like her mother.
#36 Doubts Confirmed
This happened to me. She didn't say anything about me possibly not being the father. But, for a host of reasons, I had my doubts. It was pretty obvious I was detached during the delivery. I was also the only male there because her father didn't want to be in the room. And my father had passed away a couple of months earlier. I felt lots of pressure from the nurses and female doctors to cut the umbilical cord and sign all the forms.
Everyone I told about my doubts basically told me I was being the bad guy and not supporting her. I felt so alone during that time. Even my mother wasn't on my side. Even she told me I needed to stop being such a horrible person and support this woman. It was crazy unfair to me. I was absolutely lost for most of the pregnancy. One week after the baby was born, I got the baby tested. Turns out I was right all along. The baby was not mine. And it wasn't until then, that the mother came clean about everything.
#37 The Truth Comes Out
Not a medical provider but my wife's white friend was married to a white man but had an ongoing affair with a black UPS driver. She panicked right before delivery and told her husband she was taken advantage of by a black man. The baby ended up being white but the husband figured things out and they divorced soon afterward.
#38 Still His Own
I lost touch with them probably 10 years ago, but the guy was raising him as his own. Turns out, the girl had had a brief affair with one of their friends. They both came to terms with it and that kid was his as far as he was concerned. He taught him to surf, skateboard, and become an all-around water person like his “dad.” Patrick was his name and he always stood out amongst his beach friends with his afro and dark skin.
#39 That's No Ginger
I was able to witness a birth for my pre-med volunteering. Of course, the ONE TIME I was able to, this ginger couple had a black child. He wasn't even mad. Apparently, they had an understanding like in freaking Shameless. He just held the baby as soon as he could. I think they're still happy together. I'm glad it worked out for the baby's sake.
#40 The Case Of The Twins
I know a couple that was very excited to have twins. When the twins' birth date arrived, the mom and dad were in the delivery room. Baby #1 came out and it was IMMEDIATELY clear it wasn't the father's baby. He’s white, she’s white, and the babies were... not. The community was shaken. They’re divorced now... The DNA test proved that they were, in fact, the children of her co-worker.
#41 Wrong Guess
A white female friend who I have known since we were kids together got married to a white military man. He was stationed in Korea so she went to visit him for a couple of months. Upon her return, she informed us she was pregnant. We were all happy for them. My other friends and I put our money on her having a Korean baby. We were all quite shocked when she had the baby and it was a black baby boy. Beautiful child, but it threw us all for a loop. Her husband filed for an annulment the next day.
#42 A Joykiller
A doctor I worked with told me the oddest birth he was assigned was a white woman who had a birth in total silence. There were normal delivery room noises and chatter from the doctors and midwives, and the white husband was really excited, etc. But the woman—not one sound, grimace, nothing. Black baby. The husband looked at the baby and just left the room.
#43 What's Up With Mommy?
My ex had the opposite thing happen with our son. He looks a lot like me but has traces of his mom. My ex is native Honduran and I'm very German and East European. She would walk with a friend who had a baby girl at the same time and everyone thought they were twins. Even my son asked me: "Mommy doesn't look like us."
#44 Getting Around
Not EXACTLY the situation, but we are adopting a wonderful little girl. During the process, we have to make sure that we also work with the father to sort out parental rights on that side of things. The biological mother has brought five potential daddies into the test and all of them failed. We actually met two of them (by accident), and they both seemed RATHER excited to be fathers. I can't imagine being so... out there... that five potential daddies have failed paternity.
#45 The Half-Sibling Possibility
My brother and I (supposedly) have the same dad, however, he was never in our lives. We've seen pictures and I look pretty similar to him, but my brother does not. My brother got a job as a ranch hand and one of his co-workers actually dated my mom back in the day. My brother sent me a picture... This guy is identical to my brother, except maybe 25 years older. I asked him if he was going to tell our mom, but he doesn't want to upset her.
#46 Rage Quit
Not a doctor, but I worked in the pharmacy. The husband went downstairs after the baby was delivered. He took the commercial chair and tossed it into the window, shattering it in the waiting area. It was Christmas season too, so that didn't help. Everyone was cold with the chilly winds coming in. I wonder what had happened to the wife afterward.
#47 Genetics 101
When I studied medicine, we had a short course in genetics at the genetics faculty, which also did genetic testing for the university's hospital, and they told us that in 10% of the cases the person the subject thought was their dad, wasn't their biological dad. And they didn't do paternity tests at this lab. This was strictly health-related or forensic testing.
#48 Silver Lining
Not a doctor, but I am medically trained. My ex-wife’s blood type is B- mine is O+ and our child is A+. When the pediatrician told us her blood type, my face got long and I told her, "But I’m O+." She then asked my then-wife what hers was, and she exited the room. My ex-wife was the only one ignorant about what happened. It freaking sucks, but I love my child, and without that mishap, I’d never have met that wonderful kid. I pay child support.
#49 A Geneticist's Perspective
My wife works in genetics and it's far more common than you think. Often they will fight any testing. The way the results are handled is "your kid has X which happens when both parents are carriers." If it's a case of dominant genes were only one parent carries, so say mom and dad aren't carriers aka real dad has it... They tell each parent separately. So often the dad doesn't know and never knows.
#50 Not My Problem
I had delivered a baby and the bilirubin (a byproduct of blood breakdown) was high. I was explaining to the mom that it may be due to the fact that mom was O+ and baby was B+. The dad said, "But my blood type is A"... cue the uncomfortable doctor. For the baby to have B type blood when the mom is O, the dad either needs to be B or AB, oops. The mom just said: "It's okay, it's okay; we'll talk later," and I took my signal to back out of the room as fast as possible.
