Hospital mixes up nursing newbies

Petah Tikva resident Yossi Beraha, an Israeli who is apparently of Ethiopian origin, said he almost suffered a heart attack when he went into his wife Hadar’s room in the maternity ward of the city’s Beilinson Hospital on Friday to see her breastfeeding a child that wasn’t theirs.

“I saw a baby in her arms — she was nursing him — and the baby was not ours,” he said Tuesday.

At the same time, Emmanuel, a first-time father, was frantically searching for his son, who was not in the room with other newborns. The Eritrean migrant said that the nurse showed him Yossi and Hadar’s baby, claiming that it was his.

Both children were born at about the same time, in adjacent rooms. At some point, the staff switched the babies.

Emmanuel’s wife, Yordenus, told Channel 10 that she was first terrified and then angry that right after she gave birth, her baby was taken away and given to somebody else for breastfeeding.

Both couples said that the hospital has yet to provide a clear explanation as to how the mistake could have happened, or an apology for the trauma that they suffered.

A Channel 10 reporter asked maternity ward staff members what steps have been taken to ensure this would not happen again, and was told, “We don’t have answers for things like that. It is not supposed to happen.”

Beraha, who is dark-skinned, said with no uncertainty that the incident, which he described as “humiliating,” was rooted in racism.

However, similar incidents have occurred in the past, albeit very rarely, with light-skinned babies as well.

A hospital employee said on hidden camera that “in a moment of oversight, [the nurse] did not look at the baby’s hospital identification tag.”

Another employee added that “it was a dark-skinned baby, and she just gave him [to the mother] rather than checking.”

Bracha Gal, the nursing director at the hospital’s maternity ward, said, “We have investigated, we reached our conclusions…. We are talking about an incident that, in the final analysis, caused no harm to the baby.”

For both families, what was meant to be a joyous memory will be somewhat tainted. “We left there with terrible feelings,” Beraha said. “Instead of great happiness, we received a trauma.”