Pregnancy/Labor/Delivery

Wow, given the gazillions of babies that have been born in the United States, to be able to say that your birth is only one of 100 documented cases is pretty significant.

A 32-year-old mother from Belcamp gave birth in January to quadruplets — and three of the four boys are identical. The parents and the boys plan to introduce themselves at a news conference Friday.

The boys were born 11 weeks premature at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson.

Hospital officials said there are fewer than 100 documented cases of “identical triplets plus one” in the United States.

Even without the extra baby, identical triplets are rare, although how rare is difficult to say. Multiple births, however, are more common since the advent of fertility drugs and in vitro fertilization, which was used to conceive the triplets born at GBMC.

As unfortunate as this case is, the mix-up lasted approximately 90 minutes when two infants were accidentally switched while being circumsized. In fact, it only lasted a few hours.

Now the parents are suing the hospital for $50,000. MT is skeptical and isn’t sure if an hour or two of holding someone else’s baby is worth $50,000. The parents claim they’re doing it so that the hospital puts policies in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again. This was an honest, one in a million(s) mistake and the hospital took quick measures to right the situation. MT thinks this may just have presented itself as an opportunity for these parents to make a little cash.

But in fact, hospital workers had inadvertently switched the babies.

They sent Bathon home with Hopkins’ son, leaving 17-year-old Hopkins in her hospital room, worried about her son’s whereabouts, attorney John Womick said Friday after suing on the women’s behalf in Williamson County Court.

“Kassie, she’s having trouble communicating how she feels,” Womick said Friday. “All she can do pretty much is cry. She’s now paranoid. She’s very concerned about something happening to her baby.”

The hospital realized the mix-up and called Bathon at home the same day, March 28, and left a message on her answering machine asking her to return to Marion to retrieve her real son, Womick said.

Womick said he wants the court to require the hospital to investigate what led to the switch and take steps to make sure it does not happen again. The lawsuits seek monetary damages of more than $50,000 for each woman and a jury trial.

The only surprise we want to find in our hotel room is a mint on the pillow.

Cathy Masic couldn’t believe what she saw when she ran into the second-floor hotel room in Niagara Falls on Saturday morning.

In that room stood Stacy Lay, one of the housekeepers Masic supervises, speechless and hemorrhaging, pointing to the toilet.

There, Masic saw, was the baby that Lay had just given birth to, lying on his side, purple and motionless.

Masic had been told moments before that the 20-year-old Lay had given birth in a toilet. The quiet, hard-working housekeeper had never told anyone she was pregnant, although her bulging belly had led some co-workers to wonder.

When Masic ran into the hotel room, she was expecting to find a tiny fetus, maybe three months along. The baby in the toilet, though, appeared full-term, she said.

The infant’s health has been stabilized, and he is currently on a breathing machine.

Child Protective Services have been called in to investigate a 14-year-old Houston girl’s welfare, after she gave birth and allegedly tried to flush the baby down the toilet.

Police said the baby, who was born alive, drowned in the toilet.

The middle school’s principal, Gary Allen, sent a letter to parents to notify them of the incident.

“The staff closed off the restroom and kept students in class until the situation was contained, and students were then escorted to lunch,” Allen said in the statement. “I announced to students that a student had a medical issue and was receiving treatment. I assured them that everything was under control and asked them to try and remain focused on their classes.”

While two midwives undergo disciplinary action for delivering a stillborn baby, failing to notice the baby was stillborn and neglecting to use proper monitoring equipment that would have likely prevented the death, MT thinks more blame should be put on the parents.

The mother was warned by doctors as she previously had a c-section that a midwife, VBAC may not be in their unborn child’s best interest and was labeled a high risk pregnancy. They took the risk and they gambled with their baby’s life against a doctor’s advice. Their choice. Nobody’s fault but theirs. (Unless socialized medicine leaves you with no choice but to deliver with a midwife, then MT takes it all back.)

Sandra Bickers and Peter Davies, both 45, ignored instructions from a senior doctor and later on Davies did not even realise Scarlet had turned blue.

Mrs Reader and her husband Len watched in horror as the midwife promised the baby would be fine.

“He had put her on my chest and I said she looked blue,” Mrs Reader sobbed. “He hadn’t realised she was dead, he had no idea.”

The midwife hit the emergency alarm and the resuscitation team arrived to try to revive the baby but it was too late.