Jan 3, 2018 3 min read

Anyone who has gone through the experience can tell you that having a baby – particularly if it’s your first one – is an acutely stressful experience. Along with all the exhilaration of new parenthood, there is a whole raft of concerns that come with that bundle of joy, whether it’s worries about their health or the impact a growing child will have on a household budget.

Another worry that can come at this moment of maximum upheaval is that somehow babies will be switched at the hospital, or that a baby will be abducted. Sure, the possibility is exceptionally remote on both counts, and more the stuff of made-for-TV movies on cable. But it’s not unheard of. Do a Google search on “babies switched at birth,” and enough stories come up to feed the nightmares of already-harried prospective parents. Also, a baby was abducted from Magee-Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh in August 2012, though the three-day-old boy was thankfully recovered after being gone for just five hours.

Hospitals have deployed a variety of methods to keep this from happening, from beeping tags to banding. As we reported last week, Washington Hospital has become the first health facility in Pennsylvania to adopt the Newborn Safety System, which captures high-resolution images of a baby’s footprints that can be used to identify an infant in the event he or she is lost or stolen. The images also have the advantage of being usable throughout a newborn’s life.

Leslie Gostic, the nurse manager of obstetrics and women’s health for Washington Health System, told our Rick Shrum, “Footprints have long been a part of infant security, but were really more of a keepsake for parents. They have since morphed into a higher level of infant security.”

She added, “It’s becoming the gold standard of what you should be doing if you want the best security for your infants.”

Connecticut-based CertaScan Technologies developed the process, which scans a newborn’s footprints and a mother’s fingerprints. Though it’s widely known that fingerprints are unique, so are toe prints (and so, for that matter, are tongues, lips and ears). The system was created in a partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Hospitals in 24 other states have started using the Newborn Safety System. It was first brought to Washington Hospital in September, and was put through its paces for a few months to make sure there were no problems with it.

That Washington Hospital has adopted this technology, and is the first in Pennsylvania to do so, should be a source of satisfaction for the community the hospital serves, and a relief for parents whose children come into the world there.

New parents have more than enough to fret about.

They don’t need to worry that their new arrival will be misidentified or snatched.