The Foreign Office is investigating the case of a British woman who says she has been separated from her newborn baby after giving birth in southern Spain, following doubt from local doctors that she is the infant’s real mother.

The 27-year-old London woman is a dental nurse from Newham, east London, who has an older daughter, aged three, and is of British Caribbean origin. She told the Guardian she feared her treatment in Málaga, a region with a large immigrant population from outside Europe, was influenced by race.

“They say that there’s a reasonable doubt the baby’s mine, which is crazy,” said the woman, who has asked to not be named. “She looks just like me. I brought the placenta to the hospital, but it’s been destroyed. I showed them my British maternity notes, and they’ve been confiscated.”

The woman said she arrived in Málaga on 1 June while 36 weeks pregnant, just inside the recommended limit to fly. Her plan was to help her mother find a long-term rental home near the city before driving back to the UK with her brother.

But on 16 June, the day before she was due to leave, she went into labour at her mother’s new property, in a village about 30 miles from Málaga, and gave birth within 40 minutes, before she could be taken to hospital. While she and her new daughter were healthy, the woman said she went to a hospital outside the city the next day for a check up.

After a gynaecologist had examined her, the woman said a paediatrician also checked over her daughter, Angelica, which was where the problems began: “She said, it’s impossible that the baby is mine. Then they said that a baby hadn’t been born outside the hospital for years and they were going to call the police.”

The woman decided to return to her mother’s home, but police arrived 15 minutes later, saying they were acting on the orders of a judge. They were followed by an ambulance, which returned her and her new daughter to Virgen de la Victoria hospital. The hospital confirmed on Friday that the baby is a patient.



The doctors’ doubts appear to be based on a belief that the details the woman gave do not match their examination of the baby – they believe the infant is more premature than claimed and that examination of the umbilical cord stump indicated she was born before the stated birth date.

The British woman is now awaiting the results of a DNA test: “They’ve taken DNA from me and my daughter and apparently it’s been sent to a hospital in Madrid. I’ve spoken to the police officers who brought us here, and they say the DNA results will come when it comes. They don’t seem to know when.”

In the interim, the woman said she had limited access to her newborn daughter, while her three-year-old daughter was being looked after by her mother.

“I’ve been in hospital since 17 June, on the maternity ward,” she said. “My daughter is still being held in the neonatal ward. I breastfeed her. The paediatrician said I was only allowed to feed her every three hours, when breastfed babies are supposed to be fed on demand.

“The staff say they’ll call me to come and feed her, but the other mums who have babies on the neonatal unit can come and see them whenever they like. If I do that, the staff chase me away. I understand they give her formula, when I want her to be exclusively breastfed.

“The hospital has been really hostile with me. There’s been no confidentiality – some people have called me a criminal.”

The mother said she had been in touch many times with the British consulate in Málaga, but was told diplomatic staff had no influence over the case. “In the end, they recommended I go to the press,” she said.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said it was aware of the woman’s case and was looking into it: “We can confirm an incident involving a British national in Málaga on 16 June. We are providing consular assistance at this time.”