Overview
- Netflix released A Child of My Own on Aug. 13, 2026, structuring the film with a scripted first half that dramatizes Alejandra Mendoza’s version and a second half of interviews and archival evidence.
- Security camera footage and hospital records shown in the coverage and the film depict Mendoza entering with an empty bag and later leaving with a newborn concealed in a shopping or gift bag.
- Hospital staff raised the alarm and police arrested Mendoza hours later at a nearby hotel, and the baby was returned to her mother; the original crime took place in 2009.
- Mendoza was convicted of unlawful kidnapping, served roughly 13 years and was released in 2023, while her partner Arturo Garmiño spent about two and a half years detained before being acquitted at trial.
- The documentary foregrounds competing narratives — Mendoza’s claim that the mother consented, the mother’s denial, and a prison psychiatrist’s diagnosis of dissociation — prompting renewed public scrutiny of consent, mental health, and social pressure to become a parent.