Mom was given the wrong baby in the maternity ward: here's how she found out

A British mother was "absolutely terrified" when she discovered that the newborn baby she was caring for in the hospital was not actually her own child.

This was reported by SSPDaily.

The shocking incident occurred last September at a hospital in Dorset, England, where 22-year-old Maisie Beth gave birth to her daughter Isabel.

Beth says she only realized the horrific mix-up when she went to change her daughter's diaper and discovered she was actually nursing a boy.

"God knows what could have happened," Beth said. "I could have been breastfeeding the baby, and her mom could have woken up to an empty crib."

Shortly after Isabelle's birth, the midwives informed Beth that the baby needed phototherapy and needed to be placed in a special baby room.

One evening, Beth went to check on her newborn and saw the midwife in the room holding the baby.

"The midwife came out of the office and told me to come in because Isabelle was there and I thought they had taken her with the phototherapy crib while I was in the bathroom," she said. "They [the nurses] told me they kept her there for a while because she was crying a lot. They told me she looked just like me. It was still so early and I was on my second day postpartum, so I didn't ask anything and took the baby to my bed."

It was only later, when Beth went to change the baby's diaper, that she realized it was actually a boy, not her little girl.

"My immediate reaction was that someone had stolen my baby," the mother recalled. "I was absolutely terrified after four years of infertility. I thought I had lost my baby after I gave birth to her."

Beth believes that the midwives mistakenly confused Isabelle and the newborn boy in the hospital, but she does not know if the other mother realized this.

"The other mother was sleeping in a completely different room from me, and I don't know if she knew that the baby was given to me," she explained. "As far as I know, Isabelle was in her phototherapy crib across the hall from me the whole time, but I have no idea what happened while I was in bed with the other baby."

The hospital launched an investigation to find out how this mistake happened.