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Nursery id tags

Switched at Birth: How often does it happen?

The 1999 Made for TV Movie "Switched at Birth", starring Rosanna Arquette and Melissa Gilbert, brought an ancient fear back to the public eye. What new parent hasn't had a brief vision or flash of fear that the baby they took home from the hospital isn't truly theirs; that the nursery id tags somehow got switched, and in yet another case of human error, caused untold confusion and horror? The truth is over 23,400 babies are incorrectly placed with mothers in the hospital each year. Though most of these are quickly corrected, some are not. The experience is usually caused when the nursery id tags fall off the baby's ankle or wrist.

Most hospitals employ a system wherein the mother and baby wear identical I.D. tags. The mother's is usually on her wrist, and the baby's is usually on their ankle or wrist. The problem occurs when the baby loses some of the water it had retained while living in the new mom's womb. The loss of water causes their ankle or wrist to shrink a bit, and the tag slips off. Sometimes the nurses are understaffed and don't notice right away. Sometimes they bring what they think is a specific baby back to the mom's room and don't bother to verify the tags because the mom is asleep.

In one truly sobering case, a new mom breast-fed another woman's baby, only to discover that the baby had the HIV virus. She understandably sued the hospital afterward. Alarming stories aside, switched babies are extremely rare and not something new parents should be overly concerned about.

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