Hospital Hands Newborn to the Wrong Mother

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Imagine visiting your newborn son in the hospital and finding him in the arms of another mother.

That’s exactly what happened to new dad Carlos Urrutia this past May at Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley, Calif., when he walked into the neonatal intensive care unit to find a stranger holding his one-day-old son Marcello, according to a story published recently by ABC7. As a result, the hospital — which disputes Urrutia’s account of what happened — says it’s now taking new steps to prevent future mixups of newborns in the NICU.

“The curtain around my son’s bed was closed so I quickly peeked around and saw a mother and father with who I assumed was their baby, so I left,” Urrutia, 25, an electrician from Crockett, Calif., tells Yahoo Parenting. “I checked the dry-erase board to see where my son had been moved but he was still assigned to his original bed so I asked the nurse where he was.”

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According to Urrutia, the nurse gave him a “blank stare” and led him to his son’s bed. “She pulled back the curtain and the woman I had seen earlier was actually holding my son,” he says. “She was doing skin-to-skin with his face near her breast. I was furious. I said, ‘What are you doing with my son?’ The mother was shocked because she thought she had been holding her baby. We actually got into a disagreement about whose child it was.”

The nurse immediately apologized, explaining that the two families shared similar last names. “She said she just assumed the baby belonged to the other couple because they so casually picked him up,” says Urrutia. “There should be no assuming in the hospital.” He says the staff was diligent about explaining the NICU’s security rules, however, once admitted, “Nurses were checking Facebook at the front desk,” “not noticing when parents didn’t wash their hands,” and “neglecting to check ID bands before parents picked up babies.” He adds, “It also bothered me that when my girlfriend came in the NICU, the nurses didn’t seem to know who she was.”

Says Urrutia, “I couldn’t eat or sleep the entire two weeks my son was in the NICU because I had to be at work.”

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While newborn mix-ups in hospitals are rare, they seem to happen more often than anyone might want to believe. In a Houston hospital last December, for example, a nurse brought the wrong infant to the room of mom Jessica Escobedo; her own baby, meanwhile, had been with another mother, who breastfed her. A Minnesota mom also had her baby breastfeed by another woman in 2012.

Carolyn Kemp, a public relations representative from Alta Bates hospital says Urrutia’s story is “grossly inaccurate” and sent the following statement to Yahoo Parenting: “The medical center’s investigation determined that there’s no evidence to support the allegations of the father. We understand this was an emotional time for the father, however we’ve reviewed the details on what happened and neither the baby nor mother was at risk, nor was the mother about to breastfeed the infant.”

Kemp added, “The policies the medical center has in place are appropriate and work. There was a verbal communication issue because of a misunderstanding as a result of surnames that were very similar. We identified this lapse in our standard protocols and reviewed all policies through additional communication/monitoring and auditing with all RNs on the hospital’s infant identification policy. At birth, mother, infant and designated additional person all receive matching wrist bands.”

Urrutia says he acknowledges that people make mistakes and is ready to move on. “I’m just happy to have my baby home and healthy,” he says.