Mom Breastfeeds Wrong Baby After Hospital Mix-Up

A baby mix-up at a Minneapolis hospital resulted in one mother breastfeeding the wrong infant, causing distress for both women involved, according to ABC News.

The mistake occurred because a baby boy atAbbott Northwestern Hospital was placed in the wrong bassinette in the hospital's nursery, ABC News says.

As a precaution, the baby was tested for HIV and hepatitis, and will need to receive the tests every three months for the next year. The baby has so far tested negative for both diseases. If a child is accidentally fed breast milk from a woman who is not his mother, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the child undergo HIV testing.

The baby's mother,Tammy Van Dyke, told ABC she could not stop crying on the way home from the hospital because the homecoming had not gone as she imagined.

The incident also left the mother who accidentally breastfed the baby distraught, as she had to wait before hospital staff found her baby, Van Dyke said.

The hospital gave Van Dyke a letter expressing its sincerest apologies, and said it would pay for the baby's tests.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk of HIV transmission through breast milk is small, and the virus has not been known to spread through a single bout of breastfeeding.

Still, the CDC recommends women with HIV should not breastfeed their children, because the virus can spread this way.

Neither hepatitis B nor C can be spread through breastfeeding, the CDC says.

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Rachael is a Live Science contributor, and was a former channel editor and senior writer for Live Science between 2010 and 2022. She has a master's degree in journalism from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. She also holds a B.S. in molecular biology and an M.S. in biology from the University of California, San Diego. Her work has appeared in Scienceline, The Washington Post and Scientific American.