Hospitals & Babies

I wish I was more poetic a writer as some of my friends, but I do well enough to get my point across. This morning I read an article in the local paper about a nineteen year old girl who tried to steal a baby from the hospital. My first thought was, she was psycho. Then it dawned on my, there may have been a number of reason why she felt she had to try to steal a baby.

A recent article from WSB stated that the girl "admitted to buying scrubs at Walmart and pretending to work at the hospital. In her disguise, she went to the hospital and asked the mother if she was ready for the baby to be returned to the nursery...then took the child and put her in her purse. Hospital personnel struggled with her and got the purse and baby back." Apparently the girl told the police that she was desperate for a baby because she told her boyfriend it was born, when she had really miscarried previously to the event.

Posting this story to my facebook page brought up a lot of points about hospital security and baby "lo jacks" that the hospitals have installed over years past. I got a lot of comments about the Mom, the nurses and about this girl and her reasons for trying to steal this baby from it's mother just days after being born.

Personally, I had a baby seven and a half months ago. The nurses at the hospital (a different one from where this event occurred) told us about the bracelets that my son, myself and my husband were to wear while we were there. These bracelets were our tickets to see our son - it's the form of ID they would check on me and my husband each time they came into the room or when our son came back from the nursery. It seemed like a big deal to the nurses, and I soon found out why. They have baby alarms - any baby taken from the maternity recovery floor without a parent or nurse would set off alarms at all exits of the floor. They are so sensitive that a nurse can walk by pushing a baby in a bassinet and set it off by being too close, a nurse had told me that happened before.

Apparently, this nineteen year old girl was oblivious of these alarms and even the security cameras that were watching her. Staff quickly caught her and the baby was returned to the parents safely.

With all that being said, when I was recovering myself and a nurse came into the room that wasn't "MY" nurse (the one that came and introduced herself at the start of her shift), I always made sure they had the staff badge on, and my husband checked too. We were so worried that something would happen, even though we had no reason to really think so. I can't imagine how the parents of this baby felt.

I don't know how I would have reacted in the same situation, or what I would have done if someone had gotten away with my baby. I don't know why this woman thought she had the right to STEAL someone else's baby.. What I do know is that I'm glad the baby is safe and that the news is reporting that the hospital is doing all they can to prevent this from happening again. I pray for this nineteen year old girl and I hope that she can figure things our in her life. I hope she has learned her lesson.