Every parent's worst nightmare is to lose their child. So imagine how new mom Lory Snyder felt when she woke up in her hospital room to discover her 4-month-old daughter Lorelai was missing from her crib.
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In a lengthy Facebook post, Snyder said her baby girl had been "abducted" by another patient at NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
Woman takes mom's baby in hospital
According to Latesha Harris, she entered Synder's room after hearing little Lorelai cry. She said she picked her up, managed to stop her crying and put her back in her crib. But when the baby started crying again, she picked her up and took her, together with her IV stand, back to her own room to try to calm her down. Harris insists that she did the right thing because no nurses were attending to the infant's needs. She added that a nurse saw her take the baby into her room, and indeed Synder said that when she found her daughter in Harris' room, they were surrounded by several laughing nurses.
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Police have investigated and confirmed that they won't be bringing charges against Harris, but clearly, Snyder won't be forgetting the incident, which she describes as the "most terrifying thing."
Regardless of Harris' intentions — and she may genuinely have been concerned for the baby and simply wanted to help — there's no way she should have done what she did. Offering advice and being helpful to a parent is one thing — taking a mom's baby away from her while she is sleeping is something else entirely. When Snyder woke up and discovered her child was missing, she must have experienced the biggest panic of her life. That's not something any parent should have to go through and it doesn't matter that she soon found her daughter safe.
Harris was wrong to take the baby — and the hospital staff has to take some blame as well. No hospital should, under any circumstances, condone a patient entering another patient's room and removing her child.
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Thank goodness little Lorelai was safe and well. Some babies aren't so lucky, and all hospitals should learn from this story and make sure nothing like this is allowed to happen again.
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