Reunited After Hospital Mix-Up : 2 Mothers Given Wrong Babies Get the Right Ones

After unknowingly nurturing the wrong babies for three weeks, two mothers were reunited Friday with their infant sons--who had been switched through a rare hospital mix-up.

After a series of blood and genetic tests, officials of Kaiser Permanente Hospital in West Los Angeles confirmed late Friday that each woman had been sent home last month from the facility’s maternity ward with the other’s baby.

The two women exchanged the infants in what was later described as an emotional scene at the hospital Friday afternoon.

“I’m so happy that I have my baby, my real baby,” Rosetta Kirks, 30, said later at a press conference in her attorney’s office as she cradled her biological baby.

Kirks and her fiancee, Tommy Leroy Milligan, 47, of Inglewood, said they suspected earlier this week that the baby they were caring for was not the baby she had delivered. They returned him to the hospital Wednesday after noticing that the infant’s identification bracelet bore a last name different from theirs.

The other couple, eventually contacted by the hospital, were identified as Nicholas and Firdowsa Amad Mallet of Baldwin Hills. Originally from Ethiopia, they could not be reached for comment.

Kaiser said an internal investigation is under way.

“We really don’t know” how the mix-up happened, said Michelle Sorey, spokeswoman for Kaiser. “That’s the question we are all asking.”

A Los Angeles County social worker who was called in on the case said both babies appeared healthy and in good condition when they were restored to their rightful parents.

The hospital’s announcement ended days of uncertainty for Kirks, as she faced what may be one of a new mother’s worst nightmares: That the baby she brings home from the hospital is not hers.

Both Kirks and Milligan said they had become quite attached to the baby they called Nicholas, who slept peacefully through the press conference.

“I’ve been breaking up ever since this thing happened,” Milligan said with tears in his eyes. “I’d come home at night, I work at night, and you know he’d be up, and I’d figure like he was waiting for his old man to come home. And we’d sit up ‘til he fell asleep.”

“The waiting period (while the identification tests were being done) was the hardest thing,” Kirks said. “Then after that I (was) just confused and I just wanted my baby.”

‘Extremely Upset’

Kirks and Milligan described the other couple as “extremely upset.” Kirks said she would like to keep in touch with the child she raised for three weeks.

After checking their infant’s bracelet earlier this week, Kirks and Milligan began to notice that Nicholas did not seem to resemble the photographs that had been taken in the delivery room. Kirks said she did not pay attention to the baby’s ID bracelet when she first took him home.

The baby, it turned out, weighed less and was three inches shorter than recorded on the birth certificate, said Shelly Shellmire, a friend of the family who works for Kirks’ attorney. While it is not unusual for a baby to lose weight after birth, the difference in length could not be explained.

“The baby just looked smaller and smaller to her,” Shellmire said. “In the photo, the baby was plump, not the skinny thing she had there with her. . . . She got hysterical. They were really upset and didn’t know what was going on.”

The baby Kirks delivered on Feb. 11 weighed 9 pounds, 3 ounces and measured 21 1/2 inches. The baby she took home was 4 pounds lighter and measured only 18 inches, Shellmire said.

Not Going to Shrink

“You know a baby’s not going to shrink. It may lose weight, but it won’t shrink,” he said.

Kaiser agreed to conduct blood tests to positively identify the parents of the baby and contacted the second couple, who returned to the hospital with their infant. The second couple was found, officials said, through a “process of elimination,” using information on medical charts, Sorey said.

In addition to standard blood tests, the hospital used chromosome studies and DNA “fingerprinting” to confirm the babies’ parentage.

The hospital offered psychological counseling to both couples.

“It’s a very traumatic situation,” Sorey said. “Three weeks someone has a baby and then to have to relinquish that baby and start to care for one that you haven’t seen before. . . . That’s very traumatic.”

This was the first baby mix-up in the hospital’s 15-year history, Sorey said.

“The chances of this happening are very slim,” she said, adding that the hospital has not received telephone calls from other concerned mothers since news of the switch was made public.

Kaiser, which delivers an average of 170 babies a month, follows a standard procedure for releasing infants. Newborns are tagged with wrist and ankle bracelets, and a third ID bracelet is given to the mother.

Sorey said one of the bracelets is removed from the baby when it is discharged. Both mother and nurse are supposed to check the identifications at that moment, Sorey said. She said part of the investigation will focus on whether all these procedures were followed. Kirks claims that they were not.

The attorney representing Kirks, Jerome Eisenberg, said his client was contemplating a lawsuit if the hospital does not agree to pay for outside health care for the family.

“This should not have happened,” Eisenberg said. “This is not a small town in the middle of nowhere. This is Kaiser Permanente Hospital. Our concern is that if this has happened once, how do we know it hasn’t happened before, and we’d like to prevent it from happening again.”