How The Perfect General Hospital Baby Switch Story Went Seriously South

Baby switch stories seem to be a tale as old as soap time. In the past, these types of stories could go on for years, and now General Hospital has one that’s lasted nearly a year because apparently, it was going to find ANY way to give us a baby switch story. Even if it had to give us the most convoluted one we have ever seen.

When Nelle (Chloe Lanier) and Maxie (Kirsten Storms) both learned they were pregnant at around the same time, it was easy to see a baby switch was coming. But, GH decided to pull a fast one and not do the switch with these two pregnant women.

Perhaps the show originally planned to, but then everyone guessed that would happen so they wanted us to be wrong. We’re not sure. But, it still doesn’t look like this story was planned very well.

It started with great potential. By the time Nelle’s pregnancy lasted about three months longer than Maxie’s (as Maxie went into labor early), we knew the baby Brad (Parry Shen) and Lucas (Ryan Carnes) were adopting would somehow become our switched baby. So, we guessed right by then. We just never guessed how.

Brad brought a sweet little baby boy home who Lucas had yet to meet, and within hours, that baby had died for no apparent reason. At the same time, Liesl Obrecht (Kathleen Gatti) was delivering Nelle’s baby on the side of the road.

When Brad found Nelle on the way back to GH with the dead little boy in his car, the switch began. Nelle practically forced her healthy son on Brad and then showed up at the hospital with a dead baby. From there, things made little sense.

An autopsy was performed on the alleged baby Jonah (also known as the original baby Wiley) and no real cause of death was found, but nobody could tell that baby wasn’t stillborn? That he breathed for hours or maybe even a day and was even fed formula. No autopsy picked this up? Ok, let’s suspend some disbelief here, but sure.

Nelle was sent to jail, Michael (Chad Duell) mourned his baby, Brad had frequent panic attacks, and then the dead baby’s birth mother changed her mind. Somehow, Julian (William deVry) managed to convince her to change her mind again (off-screen) and we still had no idea who she was.

It became apparent after …continue reading on the next page —>

Continue reading on the next page…

It became apparent after just a few weeks of getting to know a new character named Willow Tait (Katelyn MacMullen) that she gave birth to the first Wiley, but this likely would have been much more interesting had we known the birth mother for years.

However, Willow quickly became a very likable and sympathetic character, so we could go with this and it broke our hearts every time she saw Wiley with Brad or Michael and thought this was her baby.

The problem came when a cult leader was determined as the father of this child. It almost feels like this story was just made up as the writers went along and since Shiloh became the whole show, why not make him the dead little boy’s father?

So, now we are left with a story with a sweet woman never having the chance to mourn the baby she gave birth to; a crazed sexually-assaulting cult leader thinking he has a live child out there; an adopted father allowing the child’s bio dad who thinks his son died to be godfather; Julian knowing this is not the original Wiley, but not knowing who this child’s parents are; Brad possibly putting this all in a pledge; and Liesl knowing she delivered a live and healthy child, and no end in sight.

We thought maybe, just maybe this baby switch would be cleared up by May sweeps, but it’s June now and things are more confusing and ridiculous than ever. But hey, at least Maxie got to keep her baby and James just turned one year old. A silver lining?

General Hospital (GH) airs weekdays on ABC. Check your local listings for airtimes.