The hours and days following a baby’s birth are crucial in that the child’s overall well-being is assessed and the mother is given the precious opportunity to bond with and nurture her child. Sadly, some after-birth experiences in New York do not go as planned. Nursing negligence and other medical malpractice situations often result in injuries to either babies and/or their mothers.
In a neighboring state, a terrible incident occurred involving a woman who had just recently given birth and a baby she thought was her own. The situation unfolded in the wee hours of the morning when a nurse handed the woman (what she thought was) her baby for a breastfeeding session. The new mother fed the child for more than 20 minutes when suddenly the nurse returned, exclaiming there had been an awful mix-up.
As it turns out, the baby that was given to the woman to feed was not her child, but another woman’s. The nurse had apparently not double-checked the wristbands on the infant and the woman to make sure they matched. The woman was completely distraught when she realized her own child had been deprived of colostrum, the protein-rich milk a woman’s breasts contain shortly after giving birth.
The woman and her husband have filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the New Jersey hospital. It seems the mix-up was not documented in hospital records, and they are hoping the child suffered no ill-effects from the situation. Their attorney said not only is it unthinkable that such a mistake would occur, but the parents are also worried about the child who was mistakenly fed. If similar circumstances were to occur in New York, grounds for a medical malpractice claim may exist.
Source: NBC New York, “I-Team: Hospital Accused of Switched-at-Birth Breastfeeding Blunder in Lawsuit“, Chris Glorioso, Feb. 9, 2017
