A British mom was "absolutely terrified" when she learned that the newborn she had been given in the hospital was not hers. And the way she figured it out was totally surprising. Maisie Beth gave birth to a daughter named Isabelle last September at a hospital in Dorset, England. She recently detailed the experience of almost taking home another baby.
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"God knows what would’ve happened," Maisie told news outlet Caters. "I could’ve breastfed this baby or the mom could’ve woken up to an empty crib."
Shortly after giving birth to Isabelle, Maisie was told that her newborn needed phototherapy and would be placed in a special nursery. One night, Maisie went to check on her baby and found a midwife holding the little one.
"The midwife came out of the office and told me to come in because they had Isabelle in there and I just assumed they taken her out with her phototherapy crib while I was in the toilet," Maisie explained.
"They [nurses] told me they had her there for a while because she’d been crying a lot. They told me that she looked exactly like me. At this point it was so early and I was two days postpartum, so I just didn’t question anything, and I took the baby back to my bed," she explained.
Soon after taking the baby back to her room, Maisie went to change her baby's diaper and made a shocking discovery: The baby she had was a boy, not her daughter, Isabelle.
"My instant reaction was that somebody had stolen my baby," Maisie shared. "I was absolutely terrified after four years of infertility. I thought I’d lost my baby after giving birth to her."
"The [other] mom was asleep in a completely different ward from me, and I don’t know if she ever knew that the baby was passed to me," she explained. "As far as I’m aware, Isabelle was still in her phototherapy crib this whole time across the hall from me, but I have no idea what went on while I was in bed with the other baby."
The hospital has since begun an investigation to figure out how the mix-up happened.
