A new Netflix documentary, 'A Child of My Own', examines the case of Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza, who was imprisoned in Mexico for snatching a newborn baby. Film-maker Maite Alberdi met Alejandra in a low-security Mexican prison, where she was in the final year of a 13-year sentence.
CCTV footage showed Alejandra leaving a hospital with a newborn baby girl in an oversized gift bag. Alejandra, a hospital worker, was not the baby's mother. She was arrested hours later at a nearby hotel, and the baby was returned to her mother, Mayra.
Alejandra had faked a pregnancy after multiple miscarriages. She initially told Alberdi that she had an arrangement with Mayra to take the baby. However, court transcripts obtained by Alberdi revealed that Mayra stated she met Alejandra for the first time when Alejandra posed as a social worker on the hospital ward, and her baby was kidnapped from her cot.
The documentary explores the social pressure of motherhood in Mexico and Latin America, which Alberdi suggests drove Alejandra to conceal her miscarriage and pretend to be pregnant. The film includes a dramatic reconstruction of Alejandra's version of events, interviews with Alejandra and her husband Arturo, who was acquitted after two years in prison, and an interview with Mayra, the baby's mother.