A mum says “the unthinkable happened” when she was handed the wrong baby in a hospital maternity ward and cared for the infant for several hours.
“We’ve all seen the movies where the babies get swapped in the hospital, when the parents take the wrong one home,” a mum named Maisie, who lives in the UK, said in a TikTok video.
“Never in a million years did I think this was something I’d have to worry about. But yes, it did actually happen to us.”
“My newborn baby was swapped at birth,” Maisie captioned her video with more than 1 million views.
The National Health Service has confirmed the incident and says it is investigating.
Maisie shared that 48 hours after she delivered a daughter named Isabella in September 2023, hospital staff placed the baby under phototherapy lamps for medical reasons.
“Because of her condition, she needed to be monitored very closely,” Maisie said in her video. She explained that her room was across the hallway from Isabella’s nursery.
“She was being monitored every two hours by the nurses so they definitely knew who me and Isabella were,” Maisie said in her video.
“But night number two in the hospital is when the unthinkable happened and I was given the complete wrong baby.”
Maisie explained that she woke up at 3am and went to see Isabella, who was lying in a cot in her nursery.
“I … went off to the toilet and on my way back, the nurses called me into the office because they had Isabella in there,” she said.
“This did raise a few little red flags, just because I was told she wasn’t allowed out of her phototherapy lamp. And of course, I did ask them, but the midwives explained to me that they had her in the office because she had been crying loads and she just wouldn’t settle.”
Maisie (who was only two days postpartum and very tired) said she picked up the baby and went back to her room.
According to Maisie, when the midwives came to check on Isabella, “They were saying how much she looks like me.” After a few hours, Maisie said she asked the nurses when Isabella should return to her lamp.
“They told me to get her undressed and ready,” said Maisie. She said she almost “had a heart attack” when she began changing the baby’s diaper to discover it was a boy.
“Isabella was definitely born a girl, so I honestly nearly passed out and I pressed that emergency button,” Maisie said in the video.
“I was probably being really impatient but nobody turned up for about a minute. So I picked up the baby and I stormed into the office. All I saw was red and I was demanding for them to tell me where Isabella was, because this was not my baby.”
Maisie said the nurses’ “faces went white.”
“The reasoning behind it was apparently because I looked identical to this little boy’s mum so they just thought that I was her, without checking,” said Maisie in her video.
According to the mum, who was hospitalised for five days, “it was never spoken about again.”
“I’m not even sure if the other mum knew what happened, which is really worrying,” said Maisie.
In a different video, Maisie stated she had a “legal meeting” about what happened.
A spokesperson from University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust confirmed that the incident described by Maisie occurred at Poole Hospital.
The spokesperson pointed to a website statement:
“We are investigating an incident in our maternity unit in September 2023 in which a baby was temporarily handed to the wrong mother. We deeply regret any distress that was caused and are committed to providing full support to the affected families. The safety of our parents and babies is the highest priority. We have fully reviewed all our safety procedures and we want to reassure you this was an isolated incident.”
According to the website, in addition to hospital staff identifying babies with name bands, “Since this incident we have reminded staff to ensure a member of our team always walks out with you when you take your baby home for the first time.”
The BBC reported in March 2023 that maternity staff at Poole Hospital were issued a “statutory warning notice” by the Care Quality Commission for not investigating problems in a “thoroughly or in a timely way.”
According to the BBC, University Hospitals Dorset “said it was improving.”
