Mum only realised she’d been given the wrong baby at hospital when she went to change nappy
Babies getting accidentally swapped at hospitals seems like the kind of thing that only happens in films or TV shows.
Yet, surprisingly it does happen - rarely, obviously, but it still does.
And this mum from Poole only realised she’d been given the wrong baby when she went to change their nappy.
Maisie Beth gave birth to her daughter back in September and due to needing phototherapy and having a tube fitted, the little girl had to be monitored every two hours.
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So, baby Isabelle (nicknamed Belle) was placed in a nursery on her own.
One evening, the 22-year-old went to visit her daughter in the nursery.
And after nipping to the loo on the way back, a midwife came out of the office and called her in as they had Belle in there.
“I just assumed they taken her out with her phototherapy crib while I was in the toilet,” Maisie said.
“They told me they had her there for a while because she’s been crying a lot, and I did think this was strange because she wasn’t allowed out of her phototherapy crib, and I’d also just been cuddling a baby in the nursery.”
The mum then took her baby back to her room before soon making the shock discovery.
When preparing to return Belle to her crib, she went to change her nappy only to find she was holding someone else’s baby boy.
Maisie went running back to the office in search of her daughter as the midwife claimed she looked identical to the boy’s mother so she’d gotten them confused.
"The Mum was asleep on a completely different ward from me and I don’t know if she ever knew that the baby was passed to me,” she said.
Maisie says as far she’s aware, Belle was still in her phototherapy crib the ‘whole time’ but she has ‘no idea what went on while she was in bed with the other baby’.
She added: "God knows what would’ve happened, I could’ve breastfed this baby or the mum could’ve woken up to an empty crib."
Pretty understandably, the mum’s ‘instant reaction’ was that her baby had been ‘stolen’.
“I was absolutely terrified after four years of infertility. I thought I’d lost my baby after giving birth to her,” she said.
“When I saw her again, the relief I felt is unexplainable. She was still asleep in her little car and it didn’t seem like anything that happened to her but I instantly felt an overwhelming feeling of guilt for the other Mum.”
Maisie says that the incident ‘was never really spoken about again’.
Lorraine Tonge, director of midwifery at University Hospitals Dorset, said: “We are investigating an incident in our maternity unit in September 2023 in which a baby was handed to the wrong mother.
"We deeply regret any distress that was caused and have reached out to the mother to offer her support.
"We would urge her to get back in touch with us to assist us in our investigation. The safety of our parents and babies is the highest priority and we are committed to providing full support to the affected families.”
Jess Battison