Prufrock and Annabelle welcomed home their new baby brother Truman this week. They don’t seem too worried or concerned about this addition to the family, though they don’t really suffer his hunger cries, often vacating the room when Truman starts to howl. In the months before Truman’s arrival, Pru started to realize something was up when she could no longer make biscuits on April’s stomach before bedtime. Annabelle was pretty much oblivious and for the most part stuck to her routine of food-cuddles-sleep. Maybe all the extra furniture clued them in to the impending arrival.
April and I also started to prepare by taking a class at the
birthing center. Every Wednesday night for six weeks we attended a two-hour
class with five other couples. (Pru and Belle weren’t allowed to go, so we
relayed important information to them once we came home.) The class was pretty
straightforward. We watched movies of different types of birth, learned about
the stages of labor, practiced different positions. Most of the class was the
birthing nurse answering our unending questions. The second week we toured the center,
stopping in on the family waiting room, the birthing tub, the patient kitchen
(all mothers get unlimited juice), and one of the recovery rooms where they had
the bed and a clear plastic bassinet used to prevent baby-napping.
When the nurse started talking about baby napping it took my
brain a few moments to process what she meant because my first response was, “Why
would you want to prevent your baby from napping?” Then I realized she used the
word napping in its connection to kidnapping. As a father to be, I anticipated
all sorts of things, diaper changing, car seats, sickness, crying, diaper
changing, feeding, playing, reading to him, diaper changing, bathing him, and
changing his diaper. But a scenario where someone comes into the hospital to abduct
him never crossed my mind.
The hospital goes to great lengths to make sure no one runs
off with a baby that isn't theirs. Every baby wears an ankle bracelet with a
radio transmitter on it, and if the baby gets too close to the elevator or
emergency exit, alarms sound. Babies can’t be carried in the halls but must
stay in their bassinets and are wheeled from room to room. Parents are
given I.D. bracelets that match the baby’s. (This also helps to prevent babies
from being switched with other babies.) If a baby is carried through the hall
or the alarm sounds, trained security guards are summoned to tackle the culprit.
Most of this is done for the peace of mind of new parents, but I’m guessing
every hospital fears litigation if one the infants under its care goes missing.
So is baby napping still a thing? Not much anymore,
especially with all the safe-guards in place (there have been just over a hundred cases in the last 20 years). But a quick internet search
guided me to some interesting facts. Most abductors are women, and most of
those women are overweight. Some may have told others that they were pregnant.
What kind of social groups are these women part of? Talk about peer pressure.
You gain a few, have to lie about being pregnant, and to make sure the lie
sticks, you risk jail time in an abduction attempt. Most abducted babies are
black. (See here and here for more info on this.) I'm sure there's more to it than a few facts, but this isn't the place or the author to dive to terribly deep into the socio-economic factors surrounding baby-napping.
And is it really worth it? Babies cost a lot, cry a lot, and require assistance in all things poop related. And if you really want all that, why not get pregnant in the first place? It's pretty fun trying to get pregnant. I guess not all of us are that lucky, and for some the need for a baby without going through the proper channels and procedures is greater than the risk of getting caught.
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