NOT FAVOURED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 361, 24 October 1932, Page 7

NOT FAVOURED

BRANDING OF 'BABIES AUSTRALIAN HOSPITALS ELABORATE SYSTEM DERIDED. MOTHER RECOGNISES CHILD. Christchurch, maternity hdspitals find .no need to adopt the elaborate ' methods of identification of babies which are practised in .the big Australian hospitals — -painless X-ray branding of the initials and so on— named eots, identification discs tied round a baby's neclc with ribhon, named clothing, and the like, serving adequately for the Christchurch institutions. It is an uncommon . mother that doesn't know her own offspring, after she has once seen him or her! The difference iii size between the local maternity hospitals and the princi^al overseas institutions supplies, of course, the reason why there is no need h'ere for indelible distinguishing marks to he used'to prevent mix-ups with the babies. The matron of one of the biggest of the Christchurch maternity hospitals sound not a little scandalised when she beard about the branding, the thumbprint and footprint systems, and what-not, in vogue in Australia, America and elsewhere. "At some of the larger New Zea- ( land hospitals, discs are tied round j babies' necks, by means of ribbons. j Cften there is no real need even for j that. The cot is named as soon as the j baby is first put into it, and th'ere is ! no likelihood of the child being lost { track of." j The decorative idea of branding a baby, even painlessly, did not seem to hold any vast appeal for this matron. Another matron heaped scorn on the idea that one baby might he mis- j taken for another. "I should think we do know our babies!" quoth she, laughing. "We know them quite well, and so do the mothers; — perhaps the average person couldn't tell one very young baby " from another, but when you've had j as much to do with them as I've had — j -ray brands!" You could almost imagine that if the matron had possessed a masculine ! vocabulary, she would have wound up that sentence by saying "Pah!" or "Bah!" or something of the sort. "The babies don't look at all alike to the experienced eye — anyway, the names are on the cots." "Once seen, always known," began the contribution of another authority on babies. "There is no chance at all of a baby being mislaid or confused with another one, or anything so abusrd, in our comparatively small maternity homes. "The babies have their own cots, their own cloth.es — to say nothing of their own looks." The. mothers' point of view was even more emphatically stated. "Well, the idea ? . . . as though one would forget " Somehow, you got the impression. that the possibility of My Child being mistaken by ME or ANYBODY for somebody else's child was just too absurd for consideration.