“New mom leaves North Dakota hospital and goes home with the wrong baby - Minneapolis Star Tribune” plus 4 more

New mom leaves North Dakota hospital and goes home with the wrong baby - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Fear and loathing in ... Oakland? ... a Murphy's Law road trip so far - Oregonian
Yemeni 12-year-old dies in labor - Miami Herald
Bay area woman accused of trying to sell baby to two families - ABC Action News
Father of stillborn baby seeks inquest - The Australian

New mom leaves North Dakota hospital and goes home with the wrong baby - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Posted: 12 Sep 2009 01:09 PM PDT

WILLISTON, N.D. - A hospital in northwestern North Dakota is investigating how the mother of a newborn went home with the wrong baby.

Officials with the Mercy Medical Center in Williston say the mistake was discovered within an hour and the mother was quickly reunited with her own child.

Mercy Chief Financial Officer Kerry Monson would not release details about how the mix-up happened or what families were involved.

She said in a statement that hospital employees are disheartened by the incident. She says officials are reviewing policies and procedures and will take appropriate action.

___

Information from: Williston Herald, http://www.willistonherald.com

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Fear and loathing in ... Oakland? ... a Murphy's Law road trip so far - Oregonian

Posted: 12 Sep 2009 01:31 PM PDT

SATURDAY morning, somewhere near the strip, Paradise Road ...

Game day, baby! Checked the news racks, and lots of trees sacrificed to tell LV readers that 1. Oregon State has a tendency to struggle on the road early in the season. 2. Best time to catch the Beavers (No. 24 coaches poll) is EARLY. 3. Quizz isn't big on phone interviews, but he's a helluva tailback, and 4. OSU's once-amazing recruiting pipeline in this area has temporarily run dry. ... more detail on Twitter.com/PnBuker.

I assume I would have a text message by now from OSU sports information guys Steve Fenk and Jason Amberg if something amiss happened on the Strip last night. ... i.e., Quizz wanders into "David Copperfield, LIVE ON STAGE'' and dude makes the little tailback disappear, causing a seismic shift in the point spread.

No, the only news I got from Fenk is that tough-luck frosh DB Keynan Parker has a dislocated shoulder (again) ...he's had a problem with that since high school.

Won't bore everyone with in-depth description of travel day involving your beat writer and Pac-10 writer Ken ("Do you have the map?'') Goe but suffice it to say it was ugly. ... SW air cattle cars packed to the gills. .. .baby screaming on flight to Oakland ... long walks in both terminals. ... just about to step into nice AVIS SUV at LV airport, and a guy jumps in and drives off! ... we're in Sin CIty 10 minutes, and we've been carjacked? No, somebody just double-booked the car.

Seasoned traveler Goe, indignant, puffed out his chest and demanded we not only get a new car, but a free upgrade.

We got a Hyundai.

Remember National Lampoon European Vacation where Chevy Chase gets caught in that traffic circle and does an endless loop until nightfall?

Well, Goe got turned around trying to find our hotel on Paradise Rd. and after meandering back to the airport (insert many naughty words here) we took more than an hour to find the Marriott Courtyard so we missed the early show "Crazy Horse Paris'' at the MGM Grand but that's just as well because I'm not sure the company would have paid for that.

We'll have updates later, and notes before tonight's game at Sam Boyd Stadium. ... I understand we are very close to Sam Boyd, but I AM NOT GETTING BACK INTO A RENTAL CAR with Goe. ... I'm taking a cab.

- PB

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Yemeni 12-year-old dies in labor - Miami Herald

Posted: 12 Sep 2009 01:45 PM PDT

SAN'A, Yemen -- A 12-year-old Yemeni child-bride died after struggling for three days in labor to give birth, a local human rights organization said Saturday.

Fawziya Abdullah Youssef died of severe bleeding on Friday while giving birth to a stillborn in the al-Zahra district hospital of Hodeida province, 140 miles (223 kilometers) west of the capital San'a.

Child marriages are widespread in Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country, where tribal customs dominate society. More than a quarter of the country's females marry before age 15, according to a recent report by the Social Affairs Ministry.

Youssef was only 11 when her father married her to a 24-year-old man who works as a farmer in Saudi Arabia, said Ahmed al-Quraishi, chairman of Siyaj human rights organization, which promotes the rights of children in Yemen.

Al-Quraishi said that he stumbled upon Youssef in the hospital while investigating cases of children who had fled from the fighting in the north.

"This is one of many cases that exist in Yemen," said al-Quraishi. "The reason behind it is the lack of education and awareness, forcing many girls into marriage in this very early age."

Impoverished parents in Yemen sometimes give away their young daughters in return for hefty dowries. There is also a long-standing tribal custom in which infant daughters and sons are promised to cousins in hopes it will protect them from illicit relationships, he said.

Al-Quraishi said there are no statistics to show how many marriages involving children are performed every year.

The issue of child brides vaulted into the headlines here two years ago when an 8-year-old Yemeni girl went by herself to a courtroom and demanded a judge dissolve her marriage to a man in his 30s. She eventually won a divorce, and legislators began looking at ways to curb the practice.

In February, parliament passed a law setting the minimum marriage age at 17. But some lawmakers are trying to kill the measure, calling it un-Islamic. Before it could be ratified by Yemen's president, they forced it to be sent back to parliament's constitutional committee for review.

Such marriages also occur in neighboring oil-rich Saudi Arabia, where several cases of child brides have been reported in the past year, though the phenomenon is not believed to be nearly as widespread as in Yemen.

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Bay area woman accused of trying to sell baby to two families - ABC Action News

Posted: 12 Sep 2009 09:35 AM PDT

RIVERVIEW, FL -- A 21-year-old Riverview woman tried to turn a profit off her unborn child, Hillsborough County Sheriff's deputies said. They've charged Tiffany Palinsky with Organized Fraud, Grand Theft, Petit Theft and Sale of a Minor Child.

According to deputies, Palinsky went to a Town `n Country adoption agency in June and offered her unborn baby for adoption. The agency, Adoption Miracles paid Palinsky approximately $1500 for expenses like housing, food and health care.

Deputies claim Palinsky went to Brandon Family Law Center, in Brandon, a week later and offered the same baby for adoption. That agency paid Palinsky $835.00. Law Center director Mary Greenwood told ABC Action News.com, "I smelled a rat because she (Palinsky) was answering questions with answers that didn't make sense." Greenwood called other adoption agencies and learned Palinsky allegedly made a deal with at least one other agency.

Sheriff's deputies have not released any information about the baby. However ABC Action News.com has learned the baby was born late last month and was placed with a family.

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Father of stillborn baby seeks inquest - The Australian

Posted: 06 Sep 2009 07:57 PM PDT

THE husband of a woman who gave birth unnoticed to a stillborn baby in intensive care at one of Western Australia's biggest hospitals wants police to investigate possible criminal charges for medical negligence.

Danny May said yesterday he believed his wife, Sharon, had been negligently treated because she was not admitted to hospital with pneumonia and swine flu days before she miscarried and lost the 23-week-old fetus.

According to Mr May, his 32-year-old wife was referred to Armadale Kelmscott Memorial Hospital by a GP, who recommended she be admitted.

At the hospital on August 18, Mrs May was seen in the emergency department, advised she was severely dehydrated and an IV piece was inserted. However, it took hours for a doctor to hook up the fluids and Mrs May was later told she had swine flu and there was no need to admit her as a patient, Mr May said.

With her condition worsening, she returned two days later and, after being diagnosed with pneumonia, was admitted and transferred to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, one of Perth's major teaching hospitals, and placed in an induced coma in intensive care.

Mr May said he was told by hospital staff on August 22, Mrs May's second day at the hospital, that his wife had given birth to a stillborn baby and the baby was found lying under the sheet on Mrs May's bed.

Yesterday Mr May, a storeman for Holden, said he would never know whether the child, Angus, could have survived if his wife had been admitted when she first presented at Armadale hospital. He was outraged that his wife gave birth without help from medical staff and said the health of the baby was not considered.

Mr May said his wife should have been referred to Perth's maternity hospital, King Edward Memorial Hospital, instead of Gairdner Hospital.

"I see fault at Charlies, King Edward and Armadale," he said.

Mr May's lawyer, John Hammond, compared Mrs May's treatment with what could be expected in a Third World country. "Armadale Hospital, in particular, would be better off being located in Bangladesh because of the way they treated Sharon May," he said.

Mr May said he wanted the case investigated by the coroner and the police so he could get answers and avoid other people going through such tragedy.

He said his wife was out of an induced coma but he had had to tell her four times that their son had died because she could not comprehend what had happened and was still heavily medicated.

Mr May had also had to tell their four-year-old daughter, Emily, she would not be getting a little brother. The couple also have a 14-month-old daughter, Taylor. Yesterday, the chief executive of the North Metropolitan Area Health Service, Shirley Bowen, said the suggestion of criminal negligence was offensive and the nurses and doctors at the hospital provided excellent care to Mrs May.

She said a nurse attended Mrs May as soon as Angus was born and blood was observed. She said because Mrs May was extremely unwell, there were no clear signs she was going into labour.

Dr Bowen said the hospital was the best one to treat Mrs May. "We believe she had excellent and appropriate care," she said.

Two internal health department investigations of the incident are under way and Dr Bowen said she would be happy to make them public once completed because the hospital had "nothing to hide".

Mr Hammond said he would write to the coroner today, asking for an inquest into the death.