Staffers at Williston’s Mercy Medical Center in North Dakota are scratching their heads trying to figure out how they sent a new mom home with the wrong baby, according to the Associated Press. The mistake happened last weekend, was discovered within an hour, and the mother was quickly reunited with her own child.
The Mercy mix-up is hardly the only recent incident of its kind. In March of this year, Shatiesha Brown, 32, was dismayed to learn that another mother had been given her baby to breast feed at Brookdale Hospital. After the incident, her daughter, Anya, rejected breast milk.
The three-day-old baby had just come home from the hospital when the family dog dragged him into the woods. The child, who was later found by his father, suffered cuts and puncture wounds and was in intensive care at a University of Kentucky hospital, authorities said.
The newborn was in his crib on Monday when the Native American Indian dog took the baby into its mouth, “like a toy or small pup,” a sheriff’s deputy told the Lexington Herald-Leader. “The dog had a history of grabbing things off counters and hiding things,” said Deputy Sheriff Anthony Purcell.
Animal control officers took the dog from the the Nicholasville, Ky., home. Even the most well behaved dog may not recognize a new baby as a human and treat it gently. Click here for tips on how to introduce your pets to the newcomer.
A North Dakota mom has been busted for hitting the bottle while her baby was hitting the boob. Stacey Anvarinia, 26, pled guilty to child neglect for breastfeeding her six-week-old while intoxicated, according to UPI.
The mom was arrested at her Grand Forks home when police, who were at the residence on another matter, observed her breastfeeding while drunk. Alcohol can be passed on to an infant or baby through the mother’s milk.
The newborn girl now has to be tested for infections such as hepatitis and HIV. She had been taken to the wrong mother’s room to be breastfed at Portsmouth Regional Hospital about two weeks ago, WMUR TV News reported.
“It’s a sick feeling,” the father told reporters. The dad, who didn’t want to be publicly identified, said that a nurse made a mistake reading his daughter’s ID bracelet.
Earlier this year, a New York hospital was accused of switching babies, and a newborn girl was given to the wrong woman to breastfeed. As a result, the girl’s mother said, her child is now rejecting her breast milk.
There was no way the midwife could come: The Red River in Minnesota was rising, and roads were flooded. So Jordan Peck turned to Google as his wife went into labor.
It wasn’t detailed what Web sites the search engine lead Peck to, but they must have been useful enough. Natalie Peck gave birth on Sunday to a healthy baby girl named Margaret, KSTP TV News reported. “This was one of those times I was going to follow the directions to a T,” said Jordan Peck, of Hendrum, Minn.
While Shatiesha Brown was being monitored for seizures, hospital nurses accidently gave her newborn to another mom to breastfeed. Later, Brown says, a doctor came into her room to tell her about the mistake.
“Someone else was bonding with my child,” the 32-year-old mom told WABC TV News this week. She and the other mother, whose last name is also Brown, gave birth within four hours of each other at Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y. Maternity wards typically have numbered ID bracelets on infants, not just the names, but somehow the babies were switched after their births on January 31, Shatiesha Brown’s lawyer said.
Brown says her little girl, Aniya, has since rejected her milk. So now she is feeding her with formula. The family is planning a lawsuit. A hospital spokeswoman declined comment.
Jennifer Latham, 40, confessed to sneaking into a central Florida maternity ward and snatching a one-day-old baby boy from his mother’s room. One day after her trial began on Tuesday, she pleaded guilty to the charges. She faces a possible sentence of two life prison terms plus 15 years.
Authorities had overwhelming evidence against her. The security system at Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford showed video of her going from room to room in the maternity ward on March 28, the Orlando Sentinel reported. She eventually left with a large blue bag under her arm. She was arrested an hour later, with the child unharmed and napping in the backseat. She told the officer that the newborn was hers.
Latham, who has two teenage children, had tried to take another child, a one-day-old girl, but was unsuccessful, authorities said. She had gotten into the hospital by following a maintenance man. The hospital has said that it now has stricter security measures.
Latham’s ex-husband told the Orlando newspaper that for nine months, she had told family members she was pregnant.
Her car became stranded on an icy highway in the Denver area, where it was 2 degrees.
Cassandra Garcia called 911 at around 11:19 p.m. Monday, and an ambulance arrived in six minutes, the Rocky Mountain News reported. But the roads were too dangerous to transport her safely and quickly to the hospital. So rescue workers set up a makeshift birthing room in the ambulance.
Baby Daniel came into the world with a healthy scream. Mother and child were then taken to a hospital.
Daniel wasn’t the only Denver newborn who couldn’t wait for a hospital this week. Dominique Trevino was riding the bus through downtown Denver on Tuesday when she started having contractions, the Denver Post reported. She got off at the next stop, which happened to be the library.
Baby girl Sariah was born on the first floor of the Denver public library’s main branch, just as an ambulance arrived. No word yet on whether she’s gotten her own library card.
The six boys and two girls are only the second set of octuplets to be born alive in the United States. They came nine weeks early, but were reported to be in stable condition at Bellflower Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Doctors at a news conference declined to publicly identify the mother or say whether the octuplets were the result of fertility drugs, the Associated Press reported. The newborns weren’t named either, just referred to by letters A thru H.
The children were delivered by C-section and ranged from 1 pound, 8 ounces to 3 pounds, 4 ounces. The mother told her doctors she planned to breastfeed all of them.
The woman’s doctors had expected seven kids — they were surprised by number 8. “It is quite easy to miss a baby when you’re anticipating seven babies,” Dr. Harold Henry, chief of maternal and fetal medicine, said at the news conference. “Ultrasound doesn’t show you everything.”
The first set of live-born octuplets were delivered in Houston in 1998. One child died a week later. The remaining siblings are now fourth-graders.
Arielle Smith didn’t want to be disturbed while she was watching TV, prosecutors said.
Smith was caring for the 5-month-old infant and his toddler brother in her New Orleans home when the children became too “rambunctious and interfering with her television show,” according to court documents. So Smith, 19, put the toddler in a separate room with her own son. She then went to the laundry area, removed clothing from the dryer, put the baby in it and started the machine, the Times-Picayune reported.
Little Andre Jenkins was in the dryer for three minutes, authorities said. He suffered skull fractures and extensive burns and died at the scene.
After the dryer stopped, Smith took out the baby and put her clothes back in. It was not reported whether the TV program, which was unidentified, had also concluded.
When police arrived, Smith told them that a pot of boiling water fell on Andre. Later, she said that she hid Andre in the dryer as she played hide-and-seek with the other kids.
Smith was indicted Thursday on a charge of second-degree murder for the Sept. 11 incident, the Times-Picayune reported. A judge has ruled that she was mentally competent at the time of the incident and can stand trial.