Breast is best, except maybe when your just-born baby is accidentally given to another woman. A Brooklyn woman sued Long Island College Hospital for damages after her baby daughter was, thanks to a nurse's mixup, given to another mother for her first breastfeeding (hello, colostrum!). However, the state Supreme Court Appellate Division court ruled against Lynda Williams' lawsuit, saying she and her husband failed to show "any mental distress or emotional disturbances they may have suffered as a result of the alleged direct injury inflicted upon the infant," since the baby ended up fine. Know who's not fine? Williams, who wants to appeal to a higher court, "They screwed up and I'm angry. I wondered if [Jalyn] was my baby."
Back in 2008, Williams gave birth to little Jalyn; according to The Brooklyn Paper, "The hospital briefly misidentified the child, even giving her to another infant’s mom for her first meal"—reportedly the baby was put in the wrong bassinet, and the nurse checked the name on the bassinet, not Jalyn's ID bracelet—"The error was discovered quickly, but that didn’t satisfy Williams." Williams said, "[The head nurse] didn’t take it seriously. The experience was traumatizing," and worried if the mother was healthy, because diseases can be passed through breast milk. The hospital assured her the other mother was healthy, but no proof because of patient confidentiality.
Williams also worried that Jalyn wasn't her own child, telling the News, "I've been going through this emotional stress. I could never bring myself to do a DNA test." That concern has been erased, since Jalyn looks like her husband, but Williams' lawyer said the appellate ruling is "bizarre. How can you find there's no duty to the parents is just beyond me … The whole thing was really a harrowing experience for them."
