HAIL – An expatriate father refused to pick up his newborn girl from Hail Maternity and Children's Hospital where his wife gave birth after fearing his child had been swapped with another by mistake, only to be convinced that the baby was indeed his. The hospital initially decided to keep the baby in the nursery after the couple requested a DNA test on the baby girl to prove her paternity. The couple was surprised when the hospital told them that they had a baby girl, because a few months earlier the mother was tested at another hospital and was told she was expecting a boy. The hospital's spokesman Majid Al-Maeeli told Al-Jazirah daily that the mother was the only woman who gave birth that night at the hospital. “We told the parents about the baby's sex the same night. “However, the next day they both started to have doubts because the previous scans indicated that they were expecting a boy.” However, when they viewed the previous scans again, it was obvious that the woman was expecting a girl, the spokesman said. They took the baby and left the hospital, he said. The Ministry of Health has discussed several times the importance of setting up a special nursing commission to study this problem and reduce the possibility of incidents where babies are swapped at birth. These incidents have caused endless trauma to affected parents, it said. One high-profile baby-swapping incident happened at Najran's King Khalid Hospital in 2003 when a Saudi newborn baby was switched by mistake with a Turkish baby. They both lived with the wrong parents for a couple of years until the Turkish parents ran a DNA test and discovered the truth. Both children were returned to their biological parents. — SG
