A mom at a Minneapolis hospital breastfed the wrong baby after a bassinette mix up in the nursery.
According to ABC News , the incident occurred at Abbott Northwestern Hospital. The baby was tested for HIV and hepatitis after the accidental breastfeeding session and tested negative for both diseases. The baby will be tested every three months for the next year as a precaution.
Both mothers were distraught after the mix up. Tammy Van Dyke, the mother of the baby, said that she cried all the way home from the hospital. The other mother, who was not identified, also became extremely nervous when she found out that the hospital had temporarily misplaced her own baby.
Van Dyke said:
“I met the overnight nurse and she assured me that she was going to be their all night. I went to sleep very confident that Cody would be delivered to me in the morning.”
Van Dyke said that the other mom realized that she was breastfeeding the wrong baby when she noticed the ID tag on the child’s ankle bracelet. Abbott said that all baby’s are given ID tags to make sure that mix ups don’t happen but the procedures were not followed in this case.
Abbott also released a statement, saying:
“While hospital procedures require staff to match codes on the infant’ss and mother’s identification bands in order to prevent incidents like this. It appears that these procedures were not followed in this case.”
The hospital reportedly wrote a letter to both women to apologize for the mix up. Abbott Northwestern will also pay for the baby’s tests over the next year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the chances of getting HIV via breast milk is small and there are no known cases of the disease spreading from one breastfeeding. The CDC does say, however, that women with HIV should not breastfeed their child.
Here’s a video about the incident.
