(WHDH) — Two families are upset after workers at a hospital in West Virginia mixed up two newborn babies.
Arnold Perry looks at his son Dawson now and sees a child who’s his spitting image.
“He’s got my fingers, toes, nose,” Perry says. “He’s got all my features. He’s a handsome boy, I tell ya.”
But when Dawson Perry’s grandmother and aunt came to visit him at the hospital two days after he was born, they didn’t see the resemblance.
“They’re over there saying how he doesn’t have none of my features and his eyes are blue when they were brown yesterday,” Perry said. “So we’re like aww man, he looks like me, I can’t believe you don’t think he looks like me.”
While Dawson was being held by relatives, Arnold and his wife say they never really got a good look at their baby.
Not long after, Arnold opened up a drawer and saw several baby clothes that weren’t theirs.
After several minutes of confusion, Perry says a nurse walked in the room with his baby. The baby they had spent the morning with wasn’t Dawson Perry, but Colton Perry — born just one day after.
“When I went in the nursery he wasn’t in there,” said Heather Perry, Colton’s mother. “They came back and checked the number on my bracelet, checked his number. It was the wrong number. They said they may have a number screw-up.”
That’s when Heather Perry was told Colton had been spending time with the wrong family, and she was under the impression the visit had only lasted about 30 minutes — not the nearly 2 hours that Perry remembers.
“So everybody’s jaw hit the floor, people crying, people mad, just all kinds of mixed emotions and it was just one terrible accident that could’ve been a tragedy,” Arnold Perry said.
“I didn’t know he was in there long enough and to hold, take pictures, videos and everything else,” said Heather Perry. “And when they brought him back they hard marked out my room number on his card and put theirs.”
Both parents agree the mistake of failing to check each baby’s number is unacceptable, but they’re relieved the result wasn’t worse.
“He’s ok, I got him back,” Heather said of Colton. “I know it’s mine, it’s still a scary situation.”
“One little sharpie marker incident…I could have lost my kid to another family,” Arnold said. “Scratching one number over another number, that little mistake could have been a big tragedy.”
Both babies are now at home with their real families. The hospital said it could not comment due to patient privacy.
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