It sounds like an urban legend meant to scare people, but babies are abducted from hospitals–fortunately, most of them are returned back to their mothers, but I cannot imagine anything worse than the agony of just having a baby and having it kidnapped hours after birth. I don’t know how I could get through a trauma like that, and I don’t think any mother would ever want to even contemplate that horror.
When I was about to deliver my fourth baby, we were going to be delivering at a great hospital, with one of the best OBs in New South Wales. (We were living in Australia at the time) Fortunately for me, at around 30 weeks, I thought I was having pre-term labor and went to the hospital to be monitored.
I walked in to the maternity wing from the outside back door, and there was no one manning the nurses station, but to my horror, there was a row of six babies in their bassinets right there…for five minutes we waited, then 10. Finally someone came out. I turned to my husband and said, “There is no way in the world I am having a baby here. Any one of those babies could have been taken and no one would have known. ”
Just this last week, in California, an abducted five hour old baby was found safe after missing for several hours.
Just this last week in Norfolk, Virginia a woman who posed as a nurse attempting to abduct a baby was sentenced.
In Ontario, Canada, the courts have lessened the sentence for a mentally unstable woman who kidnapped a four hour old baby from the hospital there.
In Richmond, Virginia another young woman was sentenced for the attempted abduction of a newborn in the hospital there.
That was just what I found from a quick Google search. Most people who are looking for a newborn baby will think of a hospital maternity ward. I, personally, am relieved that when I give birth at home, no strangers can walk in and look around, and that I feel completely and totally safe and at peace in our environment.