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I mean, breastmilk can carry all matter of toxins and things, so I could see it being a concern.

I'd be PISSED if this happened to me.

Don't the babies have arm bands and such saying who they belong to?? Even if he was put in the wrong basinette, wouldn't the name not match up or something?

If the woman did have HIV, why would she be breastfeeding her babies, then? Couldn't she pass HIV on to them? It would seem safer to abstain, if that were the case, right?...(http://www.aidsmap.com/HIV-testing-for-babies-and-children/page/1060202/ this article says HIV-positive moms should formula feed)

@blackbird: I've seen women continue to try to breastfeed even to the detriment of their child's health, you never know what goes through someone's head.

A. The baby is 48 hours old - HOW do you not know this is NOT your child?????

B. This makes me so glad our hospital does not have a nursery for well babies. They stay with you in your room at all times unless they are having their hearing test (and you are welcome to go to that test - which my husband did).

Incredible.

@Mrsbells: Yes, they test all donated milk just like they test donated blood, and it's pasteurized.
Donors must undergo a medical screening and a blood test to rule out infectious diseases such as HIV-1 and-2, hepatitis B and C and syphilis.
In addition to careful screening of donors, each batch of milk is tested for bacterial counts before pasteurization.

@Mrsbells: Yep, you can pasteurize any kind of milk. All milk loses some nutrients when pasteurized, but pasteurized breast milk is still superior to formula in nutrient value (after all, that's typically based on pasteurized cow's milk).

This is why we want to get some sheep so we can give our family raw sheep's milk instead of pasteurized cow's milk.

I wouldn't buy raw milk because there are risks to raw milk when you don't know it's source or the health of the animal, but if you raise the animal yourself and are careful, you can get all the benefits of raw milk.

Oh heck no!!! Mix up of babies and now it could test positive for HIV?! I'd be hella pissed!!!

@Mrsbells: We don't have too, we just need to get their health all checked out. I've raised sheep in the past and they aren't too hard to care for, and their milk is so much healthier than cow or goat. We'll get them when we move to Kosovo and are settled down.

@blackbird: that's how the mother figured out it wasn't her baby, she saw the ankle bracelet.

@mediagirl: we had the option to send Cobi to nursery or stay with us and we definitely kept him with us! He had to go to the nursery to blood draws and hearing tests but one of is always went with him.

I think it's a big deal and I would be soooo livid. That is just not okay!!! I know my hospital was sooo careful about asking me my name/birth before administering even ibuprofen!! They wouldn't have made that mistake.!

Scary! I thought I wouldn't be able to recognize my baby right away since I am normally so bad with faces. But for some reason, I could recognize her immediately. When they came into our room to check her tags against mine I just laughed b/c I already knew her face, so I knew they had brought in the right baby. (I did appreciate all of the checking of tags though. I think that level of security is very important on a maternity ward.)

@ladyfingers: I don't know if they would leave the baby alone with the mother or not (I'm assuming they would, it wouldn't be right to keep them separated), but they certainly would have told her NOT to breastfeed, so I doubt the woman would have admitted she had breastfed the child when she realized the mistake.
She would have been risking having her own babies taken away.

I do understand the worries of the mother having possibly contracted HIV recently, but personally I would have talked to the woman face to face (which they said they did in the article) and then decided if I really thought it was necessary to put my baby through all that testing.

I think it was just a precaution. This happened at another hospital in '08 or '09 and they talked about doing HIV testing on the baby then, too.

@blackbird: The rate of HIV transmission is low, especially when the mom is on anti-retrovirals and other appropriate meds. In the developing world the benefits of breastfeeding can out weigh the risk of transmission. Not sure that applies in the developed world.

Also, gross. My sister gave me her pumped milk when my babe was in the nicu and my milk was just coming in and they were threatening me with formula. It was such an intimate thing, such a gift from her. I'll never forget it. I'd have been appalled to just have some random woman feeding my child.