God, I can't imagine how traumatizing that was to her. Poor woman.

In case anybody's wondering, the headline refers to this incident last weekend (pops).

/submitter

I'm not sure if it's better or worse than the American cops who thought it would be fun to tase somebody trying to take a baby out of a hospital. Better to have the baby fall to the floor than risk letting it be held by a possibly noncustodial parent, they thought.

That kid isn't any 7 weeks old, unless the gestation time was 24 months.

Mrs Bowker suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and was left emotionally scarred after the ordeal. She only recovered after a year of counselling.

Sorry, but no. That's the lawyer talking.

You don't have PTSD for a year and then magically recover after exactly a year.

/You'll get over it.

Mrs Bowker suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and was left emotionally scarred after the ordeal. She only recovered after a year of counselling.

*cough*bullshiatprofiteering*cough*

Her daughter is an adorable little girl.

Count your blessings not your money.

mikaloyd: *cough*bullshiatprofiteering*cough*

really, Jesus fark you people are stupid. first of all you dont accuse someone of attempting to steal their child and then call it an "exercise". Yes indeed she suffered pts because shes a mother and most NORMAL mothers, though perhaps not yours, have as their first priority the safety and welfare of their child.


You bet your ass i would sue the hospital to the ground. If they need to test something HIRE actors, but for farks sake don't "mistakenly" try this out on paying persons who came to your hospital for aid and security. A hospital should be a place of aid and safety, not stress and asshattery.

You haven't been to this hospital. I have.

/she deserves every penny
//you don't want to know
///you really don't

crazywisdom_uk:


//you don't want to know
///you really don't

Yes, I'm afraid we do.

dechire: You bet your ass i would sue the hospital to the ground.

I do not for one second doubt that you would.

You just sound like that kinda gal.

crazywisdom_uk: You haven't been to this hospital. I have.

/she deserves every penny
//you don't want to know
///you really don't

Work on your PTSD just a bit and you can get a pile of dosh from them as well.

Whether this woman's trauma is real or not, she deserves every penny. Putting someone through that kind of ordeal for a training exercise is so unbelievably stupid and callous, the hospital needs a nice painful reminder to think a little more next time.

I do have to wonder though why anyone would cooperate with that kind of nonsense so long? If someone accuses me of kidnapping my own child, I'll tell them they're mistaken without breaking stride (same thing I do if the theft alarms at Wal*Mart go off). If they're so sure of themselves they can try to stop me and enjoy being charged with assault too.

Is this abduction training exercise one of those stupid EU things or a stupid NHS thing?

That mum is pretty dang cute.

ZAZ: I'm not sure if it's better or worse than the American cops who thought it would be fun to tase somebody trying to take a baby out of a hospital. Better to have the baby fall to the floor than risk letting it be held by a possibly noncustodial parent, they thought.

RTFA. It happened in 2005, and she had 40 minutes of "trauma," thus entitling her to a mega-payout for PTSD.

I'm not surprised this happened there at all. Much of the work goes unsupervised. The medical work.

Greta_VanHouten: Is this abduction training exercise one of those stupid EU things or a stupid NHS thing?

It's a stupid NHS thing. Extremely stupid.

jjorsett: That kid isn't any 7 weeks old, unless the gestation time was 24 months.

That's a recent picture...

The incident happened 2 1/2 years ago.

//RTFA

I remember that episode...

"abduction" ... where is the "i want to believe" macro when you need it?

My hospital bracelet came off when I was in my room. A nurse brought in my baby and I was very anxious for the contact, you can not imagine unless you are a new mother the powerful recognition you have for your own infant andd desire to hold him. She went to verify matching bracelets and her eyebrows went up. I'm bedridden, mind, and not ten hours past a C-section and obviously a real patient.

But I was instantly treated like a poisiounous contaminating criminal. I had been reaching out for my baby and she snatched him back plopped him in the lucite baby bin, He began to wail. She said "you can't touch this baby" and grabbed the cart and took him away. An hour later, me weeping the whole time, they brought him back with a new bracelet for me.

I've had never been so alarmed or distressed in my life, and I have had as hard knocks and mishaps as anyone.

Having your baby taken away and being accused of baby thievery is exceedingly hard on a new mother. I did not get over it for quite awhile, though technically the hospital was protecting us both and I don't have the additional anger for being shocked and alarmed for a deliberate false accusation/deliberate separation for training purposes.

I feel for this woman. If I had been made to feel what I felt , if the hospital had deliberately inflicted that kind of misery on me, I would have sued them for every penny I could to make them stop doing it.

I work at a hospital, so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies.

No, really. I do. And we do have these types of drills from time to time. However, I don't understand why the person/people running the drill didn't step up and say "Nope, that's not who we had playing the kidnapper." At my hospital, there is always a fake child (doll), a designated kidnapper, and sometimes we get an actual new mother from the maternity ward to play along.

BTW, during those drills, no one leaves without being checked for kids. Bags and what-have-you are searched in case you stuffed a premie in your purse. If you decide you will have none of it and try to leave without being checked, expect to be tackled. That's not exactly what happened in this case, but hopefully you would realize these drills are just a touch more important than having your receipt checked as you leave a store, and would consent to a moment's inconvenience.

FTFA - To add reality to the scare, blundering hospital bosses even sneaked a baby out of the ward - this time with the father's permission - so staff would think they had genuinely lost a baby.

I hope to God MOMMY was told about this! Could you imagine if she weren't?

This whole article reads like a Three Stooges farce, but with less hilarity.

On the bright side, at least nobody got shot dead this time

Gawd. You shoot one two some wholly innocent people and you just never hear the last of it !

Mrs Bowker suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and was left emotionally scarred after the ordeal. She only recovered after a year of counselling.

This is clearly bullshiat, but turnabout is fair play.

Surprise, surprise, the government lies.

Don't trust the police.

Don't trust the police.

Don't trust the police.

SarahBW - But I was instantly treated like a poisiounous contaminating criminal. I had been reaching out for my baby and she snatched him back plopped him in the lucite baby bin, He began to wail. She said "you can't touch this baby" and grabbed the cart and took him away. An hour later, me weeping the whole time, they brought him back with a new bracelet for me.

Good Christ! I can't begin to imagine the horror you felt. Um, I can't buy you a beer or a coffee, so...here's a month of Total Fark.

/Slinks away.

I once took my 3 month old to visit a new mommy friend on the maternity floor. I stepped off the elevator with my baby in my arms and was immediately SWARMED by nurses. They came flying from everywhere.

Luckily, it was pretty obvious that mine was not a newborn. Still, it was unnerving.

Everyone learn from my momentary distress. DO NOT take an infant to a maternity floor.

/No, I didn't sue.
//I don't blame the woman who did, though.
/// Had they tried to take her from me to "verify" things, it might just have gotten a little ugly.
////New Mommies tend to have just a little bit of teh crazee.

They were practicing for a 'Code Adam'. At my hospital they use a doll. When they call a code overhead they don't announce that it's a drill. As far as the employees know a child abduction could have actually occurred. All employees are to go to the nearest exit and stop all people with children and large bags. I usually explain that we are having a drill and no one has ever gotten nasty with me.

When the drill is over they will call 'Code Adam all clear" overhead.

Usually people will tell me that they are glad we have these drills and are really nice about cooperating. Sounds to me like this chick ran into some Barney Fife wannabe.

//wanted for questioning

I'm not getting why so many people are calling bullshiat on the PTSD claim. Childbirth is pretty much the most intense thing a human being can go through, and being put through the additional trauma described is something that will stay with her for the rest of her life. TFA says she has "recovered", but I could easily seeing her having nightmares about this for the rest of her life.

I'm with dechire on this one - since it's not legal to beat the crap out of them, then the least I'd do is settle for suing the crap out of them.

Single White Male: mikaloyd: *cough*bullshiatprofiteering*cough*

I have to disagree. At seven weeks after delivery, a mother can still be suffering from post-partum depression at the worst and screwy hormones at the least. An incident like this could have a very profound and detrimental affect on her mental state.

And one CAN get help with counseling and one CAN get better over a year's time.

If ever there were a time when a person should be able to expect emotional support from her hospital/medical team, it's when she's just given birth and is trying to bond to that infant.

Further, the hormones and their consequences can make a person pretty whacked anyway. Hospitals, of all places, should know that.

Opposite problem at the hospital where I had my second baby: when we got back to the maternity ward (I was still holding her while they wheeled me back) they took her off to the "nursery" and turned me toward the hall with the rooms. I said, "No way, give me back that baby." Couple dozen babies in the nursery - I could see no one in the nursery with them.

That hospital had advertised itself as permitting moms to room with their infants (::eyeroll:: what an innovation). They said, No, baby had to have a basinette thingie assigned to it. So I got up and walked to the nursery while they issued her the plastic bin, then I took her and the bin to my room, where she and I had a long conversation about life and how she was just going to have to get used to bureaucracy.

She was irritated, she liked it where she was before.

They did put matching ID bracelets on us in the delivery room. They had had a babynapping only a few months before - and it was in a town where one of those crazy fake pregnancy ladies had kidnapped a near-term woman and excised the baby with a car key...lots of anxious new moms at the time...it was before security cameras were standard.

god DAMN they're cute!

vsync: Mrs Bowker suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and was left emotionally scarred after the ordeal. She only recovered after a year of counselling.

This is clearly bullshiat, but turnabout is fair play.

Surprise, surprise, the government lies.

Don't trust the police.

Don't trust the police.

Don't trust the police.

-1. Poor effort. Your troll-fu is beyond weak.

NHS != the police

This thread has the least boobies ever.

/ironic

Tenkin: NHS != the police

Run by the government. Agent of the state. Therefore hospital staff = police force.

I assume that they used force to compel her to stay, otherwise why didn't she just leave? Then again the Brits do seem particularly well conditioned to abuse by authorities.

BTW I don't know about Britain's requirements for warrants, but why did the police decide to search her bags?

How is babby stolen?

Usernameaboutnothing: How is babby stolen?

Hah, I lol'd.

/Most any 'babby' comment gets me

/does not approve

PsyClerk: BTW, during those drills, no one leaves without being checked for kids. Bags and what-have-you are searched in case you stuffed a premie in your purse. If you decide you will have none of it and try to leave without being checked, expect to be tackled. That's not exactly what happened in this case, but hopefully you would realize these drills are just a touch more important than having your receipt checked as you leave a store, and would consent to a moment's inconvenience.

I realize the importance of preventing children from being kidnapped, but I hope you (and your hospital) realize the folly of committing assault against someone for the sake of keeping your drill realistic. Tackling someone when no baby is really missing will easily earn you criminal charges, a well founded lawsuit, and quite possibly serious injury to somebody (not necessarily the person who doesn't play along).