What Happened to “A Child of My Own”’s Ale Mendoza and Her Husband After She Faked a Pregnancy and Kidnapped a Baby?

Experts believe the subject of Netflix’s ‘A Child of My Own’ suffered from a psychological pregnancy

NEED TO KNOW

• Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza served over 13 years in prison after faking a pregnancy and kidnapping a baby
• The Netflix documentary A Child of My Own explores Mendoza’s story and the events leading up to her arrest
• Mendoza and her husband reunited after her release and now care for his son from another relationship

Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza felt enormous pressure after getting married.

Mendoza, who sometimes went by Ale, knew it was expected of her to have a baby. In the Netflix documentary A Child of My Own (Un Hijo Propio), she told director Maite Alberdi that, in addition to the outside pressure from her husband and his family, she felt desperate, too.

“I always dreamed of being a mom,” Mendoza said. “I’ve always liked children; I’ve always been drawn to them.”

After suffering three miscarriages, per the BBC, Mendoza became more and more desperate and made a decision at the Hospital General de México that resulted in her being sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Here’s everything to know about where Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza and her husband are now.

Mendoza felt a lot of societal and familial pressure to have a baby

Mendoza was only 17 years old when she married Arturo Calderón Gamiño, and said in A Child of My Own that her first pregnancy was part of why they decided to get married in July 2000. She said she felt pregnancy was the only way she would be properly accepted by her husband’s family, especially her mother-in-law.

By the age of 25, Mendoza had suffered two miscarriages. She alleged in the documentary that Gamiño and his family told her the miscarriages happened because she wasn’t taking enough care of herself. After undergoing health tests, Mendoza decided to try in vitro fertilization, and she became pregnant for the third time.

When she suffered her third miscarriage, Mendoza decided to withhold the news from her and her husband’s families and pretend everything was fine.

“I didn’t want to hear yet again, ‘I told you so,’ or ‘It’s your fault’ or, ‘You don’t understand,’ ” she said in the documentary.

Mendoza said she met a woman at work who she thought could help her

Mendoza was working as an admin at the Hospital General de México when she said she met Mayra Navarro, a pregnant woman, who denies ever meeting Mendoza before the day of her birth.

According to Mendoza, Navarro told her she didn’t want to keep her baby, so the two came to a verbal agreement that, after Navarro gave birth, Mendoza would take the baby and pass it off as her own.

This alleged plan let Mendoza keep up the pretense that she was still pregnant. She gained weight to sell the illusion, adjusted her medical records at the hospital, according to the BBC, and, in the documentary, said she started to convince herself it was all real.

“In my head, I was saying, ‘What if I actually am pregnant?’ ” she said. “There was a lot going on in my head that wasn’t right.”

On June 17, 2009, Navarro gave birth to her daughter, Katya Valentina, per Infobae. Mendoza claimed in the documentary that she visited Navarro and Katya that day to take the baby, and that Navarro intentionally left the hospital alone.

Around 6:45 p.m., Mendoza put the baby in a department store bag and met up with Gamiño at a hotel in Mexico City, according to La Jornada.

Hours later, police broke in and arrested the couple.

Navarro claimed she never made a deal with Mendoza

According to Navarro, who was also interviewed for the Netflix documentary, the claim that she set up an agreement with Mendoza to give her her baby is “illogical.”

“There was never a deal, never,” Navarro said in A Child of My Own. “I didn’t see [Mendoza] until the day Katya was born, and the evidence shows that.”

Navarro claimed she frequented another clinic prior to her due date and only went to the Hospital General de México to give birth. She assumed Mendoza was a social worker because she came to her bedside after the birth and was asking her many questions. According to Navarro, she left her hospital room to use the bathroom and, when she returned, her baby was gone.

In security footage dated June 17, 2009, Mendoza was seen walking out of the hospital with a large gift bag, which is how she carried the baby without anybody noticing. The hospital quickly reported the baby missing, and police searched all the addresses in Mendoza’s hospital file, per La Jornada.

After Mendoza and Gamiño were arrested, Navarro told police that she had never met Mendoza before the birth. While filming the documentary years later, Navarro said she still has no sympathy for Mendoza and does not think she will ever forgive her.

Gamiño was devastated by the news, and Mendoza was sentenced to prison

Police initially thought Gamiño was an accomplice, even though Mendoza insisted that he had “nothing to do with it,” El Siglo de Torreón reported. He spent two years and six months in jail, until he was acquitted.

“She did something unforgivable,” Gamiño said about his wife.

Experts believed Mendoza suffered from a psychological pregnancy due to the social pressure she felt to have a baby. According to the Cleveland Clinic, in a psychological pregnancy a person thinks they are pregnant, even experiencing pregnancy symptoms, despite the fact that they are not.

On Nov. 9, 2011, Mendoza was found criminally responsible for the unlawful kidnapping of a minor under 16 years of age with the intention of harming her or someone else. She was sentenced to 13 years and four months in prison and charged a fine.

Where are Mendoza and her husband now?

Mendoza completed her sentence in 2022. Gamiño was one of the people who stood outside the prison walls to welcome her out of incarceration.

Over the next few years, Gamiño still wanted kids. He and Mendoza separated for a while, and Gamiño ended up having a son with another woman. But then, he came back to Mendoza.

Today, the couple is together, and they both parent Gamiño’s young son.

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