This has happened to all of us. You are walking out of a store pushing your groceries with one arm, carrying the baby in the other, and talking to your mother-in-law on the phone describing down to the last detail exactly how much and how often you are feeding the baby play for play and defending your reasons why you just.. aren't into cohabitive sleeping.. when... BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP! You stand with your mouth half gaping open at the lights and bells while people all around you stare at you like you are a common criminal.
You hastily hang up the phone and sheepishly let a store security guard
check your receipts and bags, which takes a million years because god
knows what you've got stashed in your diaper bag. You stand and wait as
people stroll past and stare like you are some accident on the highway,
only to find that the clerk forgot to take a security tag off of your
lovely new pair of clearance panties.
You finally stroll to the car after having your security tag removed and think to yourself... "With all of that technology... all they stopped me from taking was a pair of clearance underpants.." If you have ever been thought along the same string of logic as this, breathe a sigh of relief because there is finally something more useful being done with the basic technology of shoplifting deterrents. In many hospitals across the country, a new trend in child-safety is becoming common place, only to be lovingly labeled as.. "baby lo-jack."
While the number of child abduction cases from hospitals is relatively low, amounting to somewhere around two-hundred cases in the last twenty years, the fact of the matter is that it still happens. To protect the safety and ownership of a child to it's mother, all babies are labeled with a variety of plastic hospital tags that are routinely checked against the mothers' and fathers' bands before the baby is left to your care.
While one of the main goals of the nursery system is to take care of your child while you are recovering, their second task is making sure that the right child is registered to the right mother and that the general safety and security of the child is in no way threatened.
There is no greater nightmare than imagining your brand new bouncing baby all of a sudden coming up missing, and the awful truth being that more than likely you would never see your own child again.
While like any mother, I keep a very close eye on my infant, and wear her in a sling while shopping as the idea of leaving her exposed in a push-cart could lead to similar type of situations, the thought that my baby could end up missing from the hospital didn't occur to me until my daughter came back from the nursery one evening, wearing what looked suspiciously like an anti-theft deterrent tag around her foot.
Puzzled, my husband walked out into the hallway to ask the nurses desk when we both about dropped dead in fright at the loud sirens and flashing lights. The two main ladies from the nursery came bounding down the hall accompanied by two security guards, each from a different end of the hallway.
My husband just stood frozen as he was escorted quickly back into our room and the alarm disabled, while the head nurse explained to me that we were not to take the baby from the room without calling first and that we were not allowed to leave the floor, remarking that the elevators, stairwells, and general lobby would all trigger the alarm.
Having not seen any of the other babies in the nursery wearing this baby lo-jack, I inquired as to why my daughter had suddenly appeared with one. The head nurse told me that my daughter had received more than five visitors that were not accompanied by myself or my husband and that were not immediate care physicians or pediatricians.
Curious, and a bit intrigued, I made the long slow trek to the nursery to look at the visitors book. The nursery had kept tight records and as I scanned over the visitors I saw that it had been a few nurses from labor and delivery, the anesthesiologist, our Medicare case worker, the cafeteria delivery lady, and a few of the medical students I had allowed to watch my surgery due to its extremely rare and serious circumstance.
While I was put at ease that no wander-ins from the street were in visiting my baby, I felt much more secure knowing that there was no possible way that she would just "disappear" without a flight of nurses, security guards and flashing lights to stand in the way.
This ankle monitor stayed on my daughter up until the very moment I was wheeled down the hall with her on the way to the car to go home. I hugged and thanked the nursery girls and the head nurses, and using a tag remover she snapped off the ankle monitor and we were free to go. Many hospitals across the nation are implementing tighter security for their labor and nursery units, calling the "baby lo-jack" program "HUGS."
After looking into the program a little more I also found that the mothers were also given similar wrist bracelets known as "Kisses" tags.. aww.. how cute... Hugs and Kisses...) These bracelets automatically match to your infants tag and with a touch of one to the other verifies that the infant is indeed yours and vica versa.
As a mother who has experienced "baby lo-jacking" firsthand, I highly recommend any expecting mother to actively ask your delivery hospital if this type of security program is available and if it isn't you can personally contact the Verichip manufacturers about coming to show a demo to your hospital or area. I know that this system is effective, easy, and as we all are at the whim of our bodies and the medical staff when we are sick and during and after child birth, it helps new moms sleep better and more soundly knowing for sure that their little one is safe, under lock down.
Find out more about the Hugs and Kisses program and technology related to the VeriCHIP Applied Digital Security Solution.
