Mom Breastfeeds the Wrong Baby In the Hospital
Photo: Thinkstock
Those first days in the hospital after my son was born are a bit of a blur. I was sore, sleep deprived and getting to know this new baby, who was mine, but still a complete stranger. I remember the nurses checking and double checking our hospital bracelets when I picked him up from the nursery after taking a shower, and thinking, “Oh, come on, I know that one’s mine. Sure, he’s new, but I’d recognize those piercing dark blue eyes anywhere.” (Now, his eyes are dark brown, but still intense.) But at the same time, I was kind of relieved they were checking because, honestly, my mind wasn’t exactly with-it, and, well, newborns look a lot alike. No one wants a mix up.
But, mix ups do occasionally happen — in fact, one did this week at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Apple Valley, Minnesota. New mom Tammy Van Dyke says her newborn son, Cody, was placed in the wrong bassinet and taken to another mother’s room, and that the other mother breastfed him, according to KARE 11 in Minneapolis.
Reportedly, the other mother told a nurse ”I don’t think this is my baby,” and the nurse told her it was, and that she was just tired. After the feeding, the mother saw that the baby’s bracelet was not her child’s. Both women underwent tests for HIV and hepatitis after the incident.
Thursday, Abbott Northwestern Hospital released a statement that said:
“Yesterday morning at Abbott Northwestern Hospital an infant was taken from the newborn nursery to the wrong room and was briefly breastfed by a woman who is not this infant’s mother. While hospital procedures require staff to match codes on the infant’s and mother’s identification bands in order to prevent incidents like this, it appears these procedures were not followed in this case.”
Scary! It just goes to show, even in those first days, you do have mother’s intuition, but it’s worth it to do some double checking — trust your gut, and check the bracelet.
What do you think of the baby mix-up story? Was the mother at fault? Or the nurses or both?
Plus, more from The Bump:
Top 10 Breastfeeding Tips for New Moms
What Will My Newborn Look Like?
The Knot Blog
The Nest Blog
I wish there was a way for me to post a picture here to illustrate what they do in Japanese maternity wards. If you visit my face book page Perfect Baby Infant Massage and scroll a little ways down, you will see the picture of the LEGS of my friend’s baby boy who was born in Sendai last year. They have the mother’s name, in Japanese, written on baby’s shins. Food-for-thought?
Woah. That one I would say would be the fault of the nurses. The mum said she didn’t think it was her baby, and instead of checking, they just dismissed her concerns. I remember how out of it I was when my daughter was born, luckily she roomed in with me the whole time, but when you’re still hazy from labour and trying to recover, the nurses need to be on the ball and follow procedure. That said, mistakes happen – luckily it got straightened out and hopefully everyone was healthy.
And my mother wonders why I’m worried about going to the hospital!!! First I see a story about a woman trying to kidnap a newborn, now this!! Egads…I think it’s the nurse’s fault for just pushing the mother & belittling her feelings….
Um! The nurse was at fault if she told the mother that it was her baby & she was just tired. She deserves to be fired! @@
I am so glad I am done having babies.
Mistakes happen unfortunately because we are all HUMAN! Just be thankful or in hopes that the mother that breasted was healthy and HIV negative! My fear would be the lady that breast fed my baby would be sick!
My wife and I have had two children in the past two years. The babies stayed with us throughout our stay at the hospital. Each room was setup with a basinnet for the baby to sleep int. Almost all activities by the staff were done in our room. I don’t understand why any hospital still uses the old nursery setup anymore. Just seems like its asking for trouble.
HIV and hepatitis risks aside (which is scary and legit), I would be more angry if they gave my baby to someone else and the other mom gave him formula. And as Darrin said, room in.
Well, luckily the child was returned to the correct mother. I just hope that the wrong child that got the wonderful breast milk was breast fed by his mother. Breast is best. Now that he’s had the good stuff, hopefully, he is still getting it!
I dont think the isssue is that the mom is formula feeding …it is that the baby was exposed to another humans secreatons that could potenialy infect the infant with a fatel diease. No all moms take care of themselves. Would you trust a strange to breastfeed your kid? I hope this was a healthy mom that was breastfeeding this little one.
My daycare gave another baby one of my son’s bottles of expressed milk once.
This is just another reason in favour of ‘rooming in’.
This is why I kept my baby in my room the entire visit. Unfortunately, they had to take her to the nursery a few times for tests. But each time she was returned the nurse checked both of our bands. it was most annoying when a few nurses double and triple checked our bands because my daughter was so much lighter than myself. But that’s another issue. Two weeks after we returned home I appreciated their thoroughness after hearing that someone tried to kidnap a baby from a local hospital. (Not the one I’d been in.)
In the days following giving birth, new moms are not even close to being at their best. Depending on how rough an experience it was, we are often at the mercy of the hospital staff and very dependent on them. Hospital staff training and procedures need to be followed and enforced. Without knowing this hospitals procedures I can’t bash them too hard, but it is the nurses duty to follow whatever security procedures that are in place. In my hospital, bands were matched EVERY time an infant was moved to a mother’s room. When the mother expressed her concern, that nurse should have immediately checked the bands! The mother in this case could have done so when she picked the baby up. In our hospital there was a band on the wrist as well as one on the ankle along with a monitor so that the baby couldn’t be removed from the hospital without triggering alarms and an immediate shut down. Personally, I would have checked the bands myself and after confirming my suspicions made a complaint about the nurse on the spot!!