BABY'S FOOTPRINTS.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 229, 22 March 1928, Page 2

BABY'S FOOTPRINTS.

A NEW SYDNEY IDEA.

Footprints or tickets for new babies? That’s the question. St. Margaret’s Hospital, says a Sydney announcement, has decided to take the footprints of babies and the finger prints of mothers to avoid mistakes. The Women’s Hospital m Melbourne follows the ticket practice, and not even one of the three hundred babies born in one month recently went back to the wrong mother. Matron and staff are satisfied with the present method. The eighty-five babies born in the first ten days of February are also quite content. “ The minute a baby is born,” said Miss M. Jory, the sister in charge, “ a ticket, giving name, weight, length, and date, is tied to its singlet. A similar one is attached to its cot. The babies are bathed separately, and we never have a mix-up. In any case, once a mother has seen her baby, there is no possibility of mistakes. Some people have the idea that all babies are alike. They are not.” Present-day fathers seem satisfied, too, with the ticket-pinning. They do not rush up, as fathers in the past have been known to do, with vivid ribbon for their babies’ necks.

A Sydney correspondent says that the authorities of St. Margaret’s are keenly interested in the new system. The footprints of the baby taken at birth will be kept on the same sheet of paper as the thumb or finger print of the mother. The possibility of any error will be thus reduced to a mini-

mum. Asked if they thought the new system would prove superior to ticketing, officials of the hospital said they -thought it would, though they .frankly admitted that the experiment ,h) a d yet I to be proved. I?,: “ This plan has been successfully I adopted in America,” said Miss. May Sheehan, campaign secretary pf St. Margaret’s, “and will be tried.out in I our new hospital in Dowling Street. It is thought that the method will be ~1 fool-proof, and will prevent any posI sibility of babies being mixed.”