Strollerderby : maternity ward

Congress: End Amber Alerts by 2010, MicroChip Newborns

JeanneSager — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:26:00 GMT

After news that an Amber Alert was cancelled last week when a missing child miraculously walked in her front door, is it any surprise that Congress is taking seriously the toll that helicopter parents are putting on law enforcement with their overreactions?

Congress has put out the call for all newborns born in American hospitals to be microchipped, beginning July 1, 2010. The simple process can be done in the hospital nursery by pediatricians, who will then log the newborn's vital statistics into a national database linked to the FBI for all law enforcement to access. When an officer encounters a child, he will be able to use a scanner to immediately determine if this is the missing child in question.

Funds to outfit the hospitals with the proper equipment, similar to those used in most veterinary offices, and to provide police with scanners will come from President Obama's latest stimulus bill.

Children born before that date are grandfathered - so to speak - but parents will have the option of taking their children to their local hospitals to have the chips implanted just under the skin in a quick outpatient procedure. The chips will be placed near the shoulder for easy access by the scanners, but because of their very small size, there should be no lasting scars on a child's skin.

Will you be taking Junior in?

Image: Zazzle

Babies Switched In NYC Hospital

JeanneSager — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:52:00 GMT

Let me just say that part of this story is absolutely awful - that a maternity ward's security practices could fail so miserably that two newborn babies are mixed up for several hours is criminal.

HOWEVER, every time I hear a re-telling of the story of Shatiesha Brown's baby being given to the wrong mom in the New York City hospital's maternity ward, I am more mystified by her misplaced anger.

Brown told a NYC news station that she was outraged that her little girl, Aniya Victoria, was breastfed by another woman at Brookside Hospital.

OK, so what? I'd be flipping a lid over the fact that my newborn child was given to someone else to begin with. That she was breastfed by that woman. . . eh. . . as long as the woman had no communicable diseases, who cares?

The thing is, Shatiesha Brown was told by her doctors that her dangerously high blood pressure had to be monitored. For twenty-four hours, they said, she would have to be separated from her newborn. It's during that period when hospital staff apparently took little Aniya Victoria to the room of another new mom, whose last name was also Brown and whose first initial was also S. The other new mom breastfed the baby and posed for pictures before the mistake was discovered.

Now Shatiesha is claiming that her daughter suffered nipple confusion and that the hospital ruined all her plans to breastfeed the little girl with the mistake. "The bond that you have when you breastfeed your child, that's everything," she told ABC 7.

Except that's not how nipple confusion works. Moving from breast to breast isn't an issue - if it was, babies would have trouble moving from the right side to the left on a mom who has different shaped or sized nipples (which is actually most of the population). Nipple confusion comes into play when a newborn baby feeds from an artificial nipple - which Aniya Victoria would have done ANYWAY if mom and baby were to be separated for twenty-four hours. Even then, babies can still make the switch, albeit with some difficulty, and many women report successful breastfeeding of a year or more after their baby received an artificial nipple during the very early days of life.

The mother I feel for is the one who breastfed Aniya Victoria . . . while her own baby lay in the nursery, missing out on the colostrum that's chock full of nutrients and antibodies.

Shatiesha is suing, of course (doesn't everyone?). I agree she has grounds to demand the hospital be held accountable for the mix-up itself, but I'm smelling a cock and bull story here.

Would you be more upset over the mix-up or the fact that your child fed at someone else's breast?

Image: ABC

Forget the Hospital Gown: Give Birth in Couture

JeanneSager — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:32:00 GMT

The last thing I was thinking about as I pushed my daughter into this world was what I was wearing. And here I thought I was totally normal.

For moms who want to look fab even while contracting, there's hope - a new company has introduced a slinky, sleeveless dress just for giving birth.

Says the company literature, "You’re a fashionista in every other aspect of your life, why not when you are bringing new life into the world too?"

What's wrong with this idea? Let me count the disgustingness that is the delivery room bed after you're done giving birth . . . the water breaking, the blood, the poop (dirty little secret there - a LOT of women push out of both ends during the birthing process). Unless you're giving birth at a fancy new birthing center, I'm going to hazard a guess they don't have laundry service. So when you're done dropping all those birthing fluids all over your new gown, you can . . . take it home to wash!

What's wrong with the plain old hospital gown? It's perfectly, functionally ugly. So? Here's a tip - the delivery room is not a catwalk, and the people we care enough to have in there for the birth of our children could give two hoots what we're wearing at that moment. They're there for Mom . . . and to get a glimpse of that little miracle. And if they're picking on the way the green gown contrasts with your pale skin, honey, I give you permission to tell them to get the f--- out of here, NOOOOOOW.

Of course, if you're still craving couture, and you don't want to spend $98 when there's a baby on the way and the economy is in the toilet, you can always win one over at MomLogic this week.

Just let us know how those slinky straps stayed up on your shoulders while you were grabbing your knees and screaming for someone to get this thing out of you.

Image: MomLogic

They Say: Blame Hospitals for Breastfeeding Failures

JeanneSager — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:31:00 GMT

Reading this study, I couldn't help but feel a little vindicated. I've always felt like a big fat failure at breastfeeding - despite all my best efforts, I didn't make it very long. And I put a lot of that blame on the misinformation swirling around the maternity ward where I gave birth to my daughter.

Guess what?

A new study says hospitals are largely to blame for the failure of breastfeeding moms in America. And that includes hospitals where attempts are being made to encourage breastfeeding.

The study by the Boston University School of Public Health looked at data on some fifteen hundred women in the nation who had recently given birth. At least seventy percent of first-time moms said they wanted to breastfeed exclusively. Good news, right? Except by the time the babies were a week old, only HALF of the women were exclusively breastfeeding.

Guilty as charged.

Which is why even this article about the study made me angry. One of the chief problems I've found with many maternity wards (not all, but many) is the lack of breastfeeding education for members of the staff. And the same misinformation peddled in hospitals that hurts breastfeeding rates is being pushed out in articles like this one: ie. "some new mothers really are too exhausted to breast feed right away, or they can't produce enough breast milk for their baby's nutritional needs."

No. No. No. No.

I heard this in the hospital after my daughter was born, and I bought it hook, line and sinker. It's one of the main reasons I exhausted myself in the first two weeks of my daughter's life, attempting to breastfeed every two hours, attempting to pump every other hour to increase my milk production because the nurses at the hospital had me convinced I wasn't producing enough. Yes, that meant I was up every hour on the hour for two solid weeks - I was literally tethered to the breast pump.

The problem? Most women DON'T produce milk in the first few days of their child's life. We produce colostrum, the incredibly rich and incredibly thin liquid that's a sort of pre-milk. And that's all the baby needs. As breastfeeding expert Laura Keegan said in a recent piece I wrote about the most common hurdles for new moms right here on Babble, "If you are pumping, be aware that pumping small amounts is not an indicator of a low milk supply."

Colustrum is in every breastfeeding book out there, so why don't nurses working on maternity wards know about it? Although I don't agree that formula is poison, I will say that convincing a mother she isn't making enough . . . so she needs to supplement . . . is poisoning her mind. Her body CAN'T make more, and she's being told she's a failure. Yet, her body is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

What else is wrong with the above statment? The idea that moms are too exhausted immediately following birth to breastfeed. Yes, we're tired. But after that first feed, so is the baby. In fact, while nurses at my hospital practically tanned the hides of my husband and myself for not waking our daughter every two hours to eat, newborn babies are exhausted too. They just went through the same labor Mom went through. And so sleeping for a few hours is one hundred percent normal. Babies will not starve if they suckle only a few times at the very beginning. And Mom, by the way, may be exhausted. I was. But I've yet to see a mother who isn't on drugs from a C-section or already showing severe signs of postpartum depression who isn't itching to get her hands on that baby in the first twenty-four hours.

So sticking a bottle in the baby's mouth to let his mother sleep is wrong; she should have the chance to make that decision. But so is harping on a breastfeeding mother every few moments - pushing her to breastfeed now, when the baby is sleeping and she could be getting the sleep she missed when you woke her in the middle of the night for a feeding.

There is a movement that's gaining speed in American hospitals, sponsored by UNICEF, that can make all the difference. Baby Friendly Hospitals require all staff - be it the nurses, the doctors, whoever - have up-to-date breastfeeding education. They make lactation consultants available to every mother and allow babies to room-in with their mothers, so she can determine when the baby's hungry and when she wants to attempt feedings.

It takes effort to become Baby Friendly, but if breast is best is ever going to really take hold, misinformation has to stop at the beginning - the place where the baby is born. When you're losing the mothers (like me) who walk in the door with the very best of intentions, the women who already know breast is best and WANT to make it work, you have to step back and realize the machine is broken. It's time to fix it.

Images: BabyFriendlyUSA

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What If The State Kept Your Kid's Blood for "Research?"

JeanneSager — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:01:00 GMT

I never thought about what happened to the blood sample taken from my daughter in the maternity ward after she was born . . . until now.

Apparently in Texas, blood samples taken routinely from newborns are kept on hand to be used for research. Which doesn't bother me in the slightest.

But a bill making its way through the Texas Legislature will give parents who DON'T want their kids' blood used in research an out; they can ask for the blood sample to be destroyed rather than held onto by the state.

I understand there are huge privacy concerns here. Even though the state assures parents that the baby's names are not connected to the individual samples once the screenings for disease and defects are completed, we've all seen privacy breaches around the nation on supposedly "safe" credit card information, social security numbers and more. Who's to say health information is safe?

But I'm not sure I see the concern here. Is it that kids might be discriminated against if it gets out that they have a certain disease? Or that parents don't want the blood used for research? Because only three parents have actually complained about the issue so far. In one of the top states in terms of population, we're talking ridiculously low numbers of parents here.

Would you care what happens to a small vial of your child's blood?

Image: Maine.gov

New for Mom: Spa Treatments on the Maternity Ward

JeanneSager — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:55:00 GMT

This might make even the die hard home-birthers opt for a hospital delivery. A new service is making the rounds of maternity wards in the Twin Cities to "mother" new moms with massages and spa treatments.

Launched last year by a mother of three and former TV producer, Go Home Gorgeous is an attempt to give new mothers a jump on recovery from delivery. And did me mention they do massages?

Business owner Rachel Swardson Wenham says after her giving birth to her third child, she was exhausted (sound familiar) and couldn't summon the energy to look forward to going home with a newborn to two toddlers.

"I looked at my swollen legs, my dry skin and was startled by how old my bulbous veins made my hands look. I looked terrible and felt awful. Additionally, nothing about my environment was very healing in a comforting sense. I craved hydration, soothing music, aroma, and someone to tell me it would be okay. I didn't want to just leave the hospital, I wanted to go home gorgeous."

They probably can't do much for the swollen legs. And the stretchmarks are here to stay. But who wouldn't want a little pampering after thirteen hours of contracting followed by forty-five solid minutes of pushing? The pain of childbirth isn't equal for everyone, but it leaves no one looking or feeling their best. We all share that same wan look in the first picture of mom and baby.And with an increased push to keep babies in the mother's room at all times to promote better breastfeeding, it's all exhaustion from there on out.

The way Wenham sees it, it doesn't have to be that way. Let Dad take care of the baby for a forty-five minute message. Get a facial while the pediatrician is taking a look-see at the newborn. And you never have to leave the hospital.

Services run from $45 to $139 (pretty standard spa prices - and that's when you're going to them rather than them coming to you). So would you take them up on it?

Image/Source: MSNBC

Cops End Search for Baby Thrown in Hospital Trash

JeanneSager — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:09:00 GMT

I'm still sputtering over this one. A baby is dead, and somehow his little body ended up not in the hospital's morgue but in their trash.

Now he's gone, police have called off a search for his body, and his mother is convinced the hospital is covering something up.

Kalynn Moore says when she gave birth via C-section to her little boy, Bashere Davon Moyd Jr., on Dec. 21, he was breathing and very much alive. She says doctors spent twenty minutes trying to stabilize him before a nurse wrapped him in a blanket and let her hold his dead body (the picture above was taken then, it's the only link she has to the little boy).

The hospital, however, says the baby was stillborn - as in never alive - and that she was drifting in and out of consciousness because of the anesthesia administered to perform the C-section. They initially told Moore that her son was taken to the morgue. When funeral home workers arrived at the hospital on Jan. 2 to pick up little Bashere, he was nowhere to be found. Christ Hospital says his corpse was either consumed by the flames of an incinerator or is lost amid hundreds of tons of garbage. A large portion of that garbage was shipped out via train to a Kentucky landfill.

Police stopped searching today, and closed the case, citing this not as a criminal matter but an "unfortunate incident [that] was the result of procedural deficiencies and human error."

I understand people are human, but how does a mistake of this magnitude happen? How does a baby become trash? And how can this not be considered gross malfeasance?

As mothers giving birth, we trust the hospital to take care of our children - alive and dead. The hippocratic oath calls for healthcare works to first do no harm. Misplacing a medical chart is an accident. Misplacing a baby is failure to act within the guidelines set for medical facilities, the guidelines that earned them that trust. Not only should someone be held criminally liable in this case, but the hospital should be prepared for a civil lawsuit. I hope they lose.

Via Jezebel

Image: MSNBC

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New Babies Wrapped in Holiday Stockings

JeanneSager — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:46:00 GMT

If I had a Martha Stewart bone hidden somewhere in my body, this story is the one that would make it come busting out.

Volunteers have been showing up every holiday at a Houston-area maternity ward, their arms full of Christmas stockings to wrap the newborn babies in.

The ward invites Santa along, and every infant gets a chance to have his or her first visit with Saint Nick, bundled up tight in their bright red bunting, er, stocking. It makes me want to make my own pile, just so I can show up for the delivery! This year, eighty stockings were sewn up by the nuns and volunteers at St. Joseph's Hospital, and the new parents were allowed to take them home to hang for future Christmases.

The decade-old practice is adorable; and so are the little old ladies in this video. Especially the nuns (who we'd assume don't have any kids?), who are just as baby-happy as the rest of us!

Image: Houston Chronicle

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New Dad Forgives Guy Who Stole Camera With Birth Footage

JeanneSager — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:35:00 GMT

I'm not sure whether to say awwww or ewwww on this one.

A thief in Greenville, SC walked off with a video camera bag he found in the hallway at the local hospital. But when he saw on the news that the guy who'd forgotten the bag had used it hours before to record the birth of his second child, the thief went to police and turned himself in.

The new dad, identified by a South Carolina news station only as Darius, has opted not to press charges.

This despite Darius' need to hit up the pawn shops in the area to find and eventually buy back his wedding ring, which had been cutting into his skin when his wife was squeezing his hand during labor. The new dad had put the ring inside the camera bag, and the thief pawned it before turning the camera over to police. The camera itself was intact, and footage of the baby girl's birth and moments of the couple's son's life have been restored.

It's nice to know some people still have a little mercy, making this an "aww" moment for Darius and his family. It could be the holiday spirit. Then again, who isn't feeling benevolent when they have a little hand wrapped around theirs?

As for the thief, beyond the fact that stealing what doesn't belong to you is NEVER right, the fact that he apparently made the grab while walking with a woman and three kids (his own?) makes him that much more of a scumbucket. Who commits a crime with the kids in tow? And who doesn't know that a camera in a hospital was probably used to record some pretty intimate moments?

Would you be feeling this benevolent?

Image: Playmobil

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Bride Goes Into Labor During Wedding, Still Hits Reception

Jen Chaney — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:02:00 GMT

I can only speak for myself. But I might consider postponing my nuptials if I were pregnant and my water broke before the wedding.

New British wife (and mummy) Emma Lowdon is clearly a heartier soul. As the Mirror reports, her water broke three days before she and her fiance, Sean, were due to tie the knot. Doctors gave her antibiotics and their blessing to proceed with the wedding as scheduled. So the couple stuck with their plan.

Shortly before she walked down the aisle, Lowdon apparently started to go into labor. She managed to fight through the contractions, say her vows and get a kiss from her groom.

Not only that, but she also swung by a reception before heading to the hospital. (I can almost imagine what she must have said: "I know the baby is crowning, but I paid for this @#!&ing caterer. And I am eating some of those crab puffs before I go to the maternity ward!")

The couple's son, Josh, was born the following day (that poor woman, as if the wedding wasn't tiring enough) and was five weeks' premature. But he is healthy. So we wish them congratulations and also offer our sympathies. Sympathies? Yeah. A new baby brings much joy, but I have to think he also makes for the lamest honeymoon ever.

Yet Another Maternity Ward Nightmare

Jen Chaney — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:32:00 GMT

First I reported on the woman in Florida who walked out of a hospital with a newborn in a tote bag. Then AmyinMotown told us about the Califor nia mom who filed a complaint after the hospital where she delivered gave her the wrong infant for several hours. And now comes word from Illinois -- we didn't want the middle of the country to feel neglected in this rash of maternity ward mess-ups -- about a lawsuit filed by two women whose sons were inadvertently switched after birth.

One of the moms, Mary Jo Bathon, even went home with Boy From Another Mother, at which point she received a voice message from the hospital that, I am guessing, said something like: "Yeah, we sent you home with the wrong kid. We're terribly sorry for the inconvenience Please come back and we'll give you a full refund, as well as a coupon for a complimentary epidural on your next visit."

How can this kind of thing happen? In the Illinois case, the switcheroo occurred when both boys were taken to be circumcised and their identifications got swapped. So the kid is already traumatized from having his willy snipped, then he gets sent to the wrong momma for comfort. That just ain't right.

You like to believe that the staff at most hospitals are competent, alert and unlikely to make these sorts of mistakes. And I still do believe that mix-ups and security breaches are rare. But as anyone who has ever worked in the news business knows: Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a trend. And if the same thing happens a fourth time? It's an epidemic.

Photo: Techelectronics.com

Maternity Ward Nightmare, Part Two: Baby Napper Pretended to Be Pregnant

Jen Chaney — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:10:00 GMT

I posted an item on Saturday about a woman in Sanford, Fla., who managed to disguise herself as a nurse and successfully walk out of a hospital with a newborn infant in a tote bag. The infant was recovered a short time later and the alleged babynapper, 39-year-old Jennifer Latham, was arrested.

But that was only the beginning of this story. It gets even freakier.

For starters, Latham had told relatives she was nine months' pregnant and expecting a child any day. "We went shopping for baby clothes and all kinds of stuff," her sister told ABC News.

This comment prompted me to do the natural thing: Find out if Latham was registered. And indeed, a Jenny Latham of Sanford, Fla. with a due date of March 18 is registered at Babies R Us. None of the items has been purchased but, in case you're wondering, the nursery theme is "Soft and Fuzzy Pooh." (I call dibs on the ice cream cone socks!) Assuming this is the same Latham, this strikes me as potential evidence of a premeditated crime.

Other interesting details about the case also have emerged. According to the Orlando Sentinel, she tried to take another child first. While wearing a nurse's uniform, she entered a mother's room and said she needed to take her infant for an eye and ear exam. When the mother said the child had already undergone such exams, Latham left and entered the room of Mother No. 2. Once again, she asked to take the baby for an eye exam. And this time, understandably, the mom said yes, which is how Latham got her hands on the child she seemingly planned to pass off as her own.

On the legal side of things, a judge had ruled to release Latham from jail and put her on home detention pending a hearing. But it looks like that decision, which was based on the fact that Latham had no criminal record, could be overruled. Because, as it turns out, she may have a criminal record.

According to Fox 35 Orlando, she was arrested a few years ago in Indiana on several felony charges and two misdemeanors. And another Orlando station reports that Latham may have gone by an alias and possessed at least two Social Security numbers.

In other words, kids, this is one hot, maternity-ward mess. I personally can't get over the fact that Latham pretended to be pregnant and her relatives believed her. Based on photographs, she looks like a heavier woman so maybe it was hard to tell. But by the time the ninth month rolls around, a baby bump of some kind is usually pretty apparent.

Did she buy maternity clothes? Did she fake morning sickness in order to keep the ruse going? And just what did she plan to do if she had successfully swiped the kid? Seems like that level of fakery could only last for so long.

But perhaps the most important question is: If any of her friends threw her a shower, how totally stupid do they feel right now?

Clearly Latham -- who looks a little like Kathy Bates in "Misery" -- has some mental health issues, which hopefully she can address after spending some time in prison.

I want to close with this important note. For those of you who expressed genuine concern that this could happen to you, consider the statistic quoted by ABC News: Only 120 babies have been abducted from U.S. hospitals in the past 20 years. So the odds of this happening to you are very small. In case you hadn't already figured it out, a babynapper like Jennifer Latham is one in a million.

Photo: Local6.com

Your Worst Maternity Ward Nightmare

Jen Chaney — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:30:00 GMT

We've all had this thought after delivering a baby. In that post-C-section haze, as we hand our wee one off to a nurse so he can get weighed, we fleetingly wonder: Could someone kidnap my child during these few minutes he is out of my sight? And then we think, nah.

But apparently that's exactly what happened yesterday in Sanford, Fla. The good news is that the infant was found fairly quickly and has since been reunited with the parents. Weirdly, this occurred just two days after a 10-year-old in Kansas City met the FBI agents who rescued her when she was abducted 10 years ago from a Kansas hospital.

In the Florida case, 39-year-old Jennifer Latham reportedly changed into hospital scrubs, posed as an employee and placed the child in a large blue tote bag, then slipped by hospital security and left the grounds. Police tracked her down about 90 minutes later and found the newborn unharmed. Officials say the woman was not related to the child or the parents, and that this appears to have been a random abduction attempt.

I believe these abductions are rare, but that doesn't mean news of this latest incident won't make everyone even more paranoid about parting with their kids during hospital stays. I predict that fewer women will want to deliver at Central Florida Regional Hospital, where the Sanford kidnapping occurred, because they'll hear this story and get freaked. I also predict that moms-to-be at other hospitals across America will start asking plenty of detailed questions about the security at those institutions. Which isn't such a bad thing. It's unlikely someone will walk off with your newborn while she's in the hospital nursery. But as the daily news invariably proves, anything is possible.

Photo: Local6.com