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ND Mom Leaves Hospital With Wrong Baby
Having done this parenting blogger gig for awhile, the old “babies switched at birth” story starts to get a little old-hat. But I always find them fascinating, including this latest one: A mother in North Dakota left Mercy Medical Center in Williston with the wrong baby, only to have the mistake discovered shortly thereafter.
The hospital isn’t talking about what the heck happened here – understandably, they want to mimize their lawsuit exposure, but they are reviewing their procedures for discharge after the event. According to another story I saw, there weren’t a whole lot of babies in the hospital at the time. I wonder if because it’s a smaller hospital in what appears to be a smallish town, they don’t have high tech procedures in place like the big suburban hospital I had my babies in (we had to cross check wristbands whenever the babies entered or left our room).
But before we judge the mom for not knowing her own baby, let’s acknowledge a truth: Newborns can be hard to tell apart. When I had my son, my husband and I spent some time outside the nursery window admiring a baby that we thought was ours (although to both our credit we kept saying “that’s him right? I mean I think so, but…” ). Biggish for a newborn? Check. Dark spiky hair? Check. Long fingers? Check. Then we went back to our room, to discover our favorite nurse at the door pushing our actual baby in his bassinett. Oops.
I’m just glad things worked out okay and no harm was done.
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ND Mom Leaves Hospital With Wrong Baby | Strollerderby | All Things Babies commented on Oct 06 09 at 10:23 amjeannesager commented on Sep 14 09 at 2:24 pmRural hospital birth here – and as much as they screwed up on other things, security was tight, including the wristband thing.
PlumbLucky commented on Sep 15 09 at 7:36 amNot quite city and not quite rural here, and security was indeed tight. The two times that our son left our room without us, his wrist and ankle bands’ bar code were scanned against the barcode at the door. (And THAT failing, there was an additional barcode on his cord-stub clamp)
Coolest security feature I have seen? Where one of my sisters delivered, when Mom and baby’s wristbands are put together at the chip, they play a lullaby.
Marj commented on Sep 17 09 at 2:25 pmMy babies had bracelets on that had our names on them. Ours also had ankle band lojack type things so they couldn’t be removed from the floor without the hospital checking them out. They also checked matching bracelets on my and the babies dad before leaving the babies with us every time.
Globals commented on Oct 02 09 at 7:19 pmall good things
Swerds commented on Oct 26 11 at 1:43 pmI’m from ND, and Williston is one of the smallest cities in the state that still has a hospital of it’s own. Security at the hospital is at least 20-30 years behind the times, if not 40.
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