Have you heard about this? It’s so unbelievable.
On January 7, 2012, Douglas Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy’s son, tried to take his newborn outside the hospital for some fresh air. A nurse gave him permission. Two other nurses freaked out when they saw him heading for the door.
He shielded his baby with his body to protect him from the nurses and now he faces misdemeanor charges.
According to this Reuters news report:
Dr. Timothy Haydock, an emergency room physician at Northern Westchester Hospital and a close family friend, issued a statement through Gottlieb’s office.
“I witnessed the incident and I can state unequivocally that the nurses were the only aggressors,” Haydock said.
A spokesman for the hospital confirmed an incident occurred on January 7 on the maternity ward but declined to provide any details because of patient confidentiality.
Douglas is a Fox News reporter. I hope he doesn’t let this go.
I hope he publicizes what happened and follows up with an in-depth investigation into hospital culture.
Here’s why: this is not an isolated incident of some overzealous post-partum nurses stepping out of line. This is an example of the systematic abuse of new parents that goes on in many hospitals in the United States, especially in New York.
In my book, Your Baby, Your Way, I tell the story of a 28-year-old breastfeeding new mom who asked to take her 8-day-old baby home from the hospital after being told that the baby (who had jaundice) was recovered but needed to have her blood tested in the morning.
There was no place for this breastfeeding mom to sit in the NICU, and the nurses were openly hostile to her being there.
A health professional, this mom knew the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breastfeeding to help clear jaundice.
So the mom insisted that she wanted to go home with her daughter and bring her back in the morning for the blood draw.
She was told by the pediatrician that if she took the baby home against medical advice they would call Child Protective Services and she would go to jail.
The reason the hospital wanted to keep the baby overnight? They had no out-patient clinic at that NICU.
This mom was smart.
She called a lawyer and the managing editor of the New York Daily News.
Five minutes later an administrator came to talk to her.
“Is there a problem?”
“There won’t be if you let me take my baby home.”
“We can’t have the Daily News coming here,” the hospital employee said.
Suddenly it was fine for this mom and her baby to leave.
Don’t misunderstand me.
I know there are many wonderful people who work in postpartum care in the hospital, and many wonderful pediatricians.
Hospitals, the medical community, and the new parents all have the same goal: healthy babies and healthy moms.
Don’t we? We seem to be failing at that goal, pretty miserably.
Douglas Kennedy and his wife Molly might opt for a home birth next time.
Published: February 28, 2012
Updated: January 13, 2020
debbie koenig says
Jennifer, I live in New York and there’s been a lot of hoopla about this case. This is the first time I’ve seen anyone suggest he had permission from a nurse–all the other accounts make it sound like his friend, the ER doc quoted above, is the one who said it would be ok. Which obviously isn’t the way things work in any hospital maternity ward. And the hospital says he didn’t have permission–when my son was born, you couldn’t take a baby off the ward without *written* permission, so the odds that a maternity nurse blithely said, “sure, go ahead” seem pretty slim. This really sounds like a case of a Kennedy thinking he has his own set of rules. Have you seen the surveillance video? He knocks a nurse to the ground. Why not just stop & talk, or ask to see the person in charge, instead of getting physical while you’re holding your newborn in your arms?
Jennifer Margulis says
I haven’t seen the video, Debbie. Can you post a link? I appreciate your point of view and maybe the accounts I’ve read have been one sided but he did say in a statement (that I believe is in the Reuters article) that he was given permission. The larger issue here, for me, is the way new parents are made to feel they cannot even hold their babies without asking permission, new moms are told by nurses they are starving their babies (because they are trying to breastfeed), and in general parents are treated like the enemy. I say this after conducting dozens, if not hundreds, of interviews with young women who did not even question the way they were treated. A new mom (and dad) are vulnerable and we need to support them and treat them with compassion. I don’t think he should be physical either but how physical can you be cradling a newborn baby? Why rush a dad and yell at him? In any case, I’d like to see the footage…
debbie koenig says
Jen, here’s one story about it, with video: http://gothamist.com/2012/02/26/nurse_after_run-in_with_rfks_son_i.php
You can see that one nurse is standing in front of the door, not reaching for him, and another nurse comes over. The entire thing isn’t clear, but that nurse is obviously pushed to the floor. She says he kicked her in the pelvis, hard. In this story his lawyer claims that she somehow ran into his raised knee and the force of that propelled her backwards: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/a-kennedy-is-arraigned-over-a-dispute-at-a-westchester-hospital/?scp=2&sq=douglas%20kennedy&st=cse
Here’s a link to a subsequent story, about the hospital backing the nurses: http://gothamist.com/2012/02/27/rfks_son_vs_maternity_nurses_hospit.php
Obviously, it’s all murky. But in the absence of a signed release form, he couldn’t have expected to be able to just take the baby outside for a walk. Hospitals have gotten in so much trouble for allowing people to walk off with babies. It’s not so easy anymore.
Your PlusSizePregnancy says
When I was in the hospital after my first baby, my husband walked to the nurses’ station from my room, with our daughter in his arms. The nurses went ballistic – telling him he was not allowed to walk around with her and she had to stay in the little plastic bassinet at all times. Right. Because babies don’t need human contact. At all.
Jennifer Margulis says
My husband was treated with so much contempt and disdain in a hospital in Metro Atlanta. His crime? Picking up our baby out of the incubator and bring her back to me.
Nadia says
Same thing happened to us. We were asked to bring the baby to the nursery for him to be weighted and since I was breastfeeding and co-sleeping I never had him in the little bassinet on wheels. So, with him in my arms, we walked over to the nursery (a 5 second walk!) and we were yelled at by the nurses and asked to return to put the baby in the bassinet and bring him again. RIDICULOUS!
Kim Costanzo says
Homebirths are awesome experiences.
June Park says
All the more reason to stay away from hospitals unless you are high risk. No birth center ever flipped out becaase my husband or in-laws held the babies int eh kitchen area. Best wishes to this family and I do hope they publicize this as well!
June Park says
So sorry I had a typo, it should read because.
John says
“Mother’s baby, Father’s maybe.” Shame on you for chastising these nurses for doing their jobs! They are looking out for the baby’s safety. Who is to know if the father is angry at the mother and wants to take the baby (it does happen). An anecdotal story about a mother who is not allowed to leave with her child is not even CLOSE to a father trying to leave with a baby. The father has no real right to the child because no one can say for sure if it really is his. Regardless, hospital policy surely states the baby is not allowed to go outside before discharge, ESPECIALLY on a January evening at 7 pm in NY with an outside temp of 40 F. No one should have told Kennedy he could take the baby, and, if that happened (I can only find one other place that states this fact) that nurse was mistaken, and the other nurses were correct and justified in attempting to stop him. Kennedy was rightly charged with harassment for physically abusing the nurses. Furthermore, that Dr Haydock should be fired for practicing outside of his area of expertise. An ER physician has no authority in an OB setting. He should be ashamed of himself for throwing these nurses under the bus.
John says
You make a good point about home birth, though. Hospitals do take much of the miracle and wonderment away from childbirth and instead replace it with a cold and impersonal scientific air. If an expectant mother does not like that idea, do not go to a hospital, instead opt for a birthing center or home birth.
Jennifer Margulis says
Thank you for both your comments, John. I appreciate your point of view, though I do not think I need to be “shamed” into changing mine. Persuaded, absolutely. And I am open to reconsidering this. As I mentioned to Debbie above, though the details in the case may cast things in a different light, this incident points to a much larger problem in this country of treating new parents like they are idiots.
Hellen says
Hi! Unfortunately we live in a society where the life of a child is worthless to some and where getting a lawsuit is part of life. I will side with the nurses on this one. While in the hospital they are responsible for your well being, and its impossible to know what a person’s intentions are. Sure he was not going to harm his child, but how are the nurses to know that when you hear of such horrible things happening to children. Also, if something would’ve happened to the baby, caught pneumonia, something then the fault would’ve been of the hospital and the conversation would be as to what kind of security/protocol the hospital must follow to ensure the safety of a child. If he wanted to walk with this baby we could have and was doing so. It was the going outside part that was the issue.
ruth pennebaker says
In these days of attack comments, I am so happy to find a reasonable discussion going on about a highly charged issue. Kudos to Jennifer, Debbie and John for keeping it respectful. I just wish your approach were contagious.
Mom in Ashland says
Not all hospital births are the horrible experiences some make them out to be. I recently gave birth to twin boys who were 6 weeks premature and spent just over 30 days in the NICU at Rogue Valley Medical Center. The NICU nurses and doctors were amazing. They constantly encouraged and helped me to breastfeed and hold the babies as much as possible. It is unfair to characterize all nurses as disrespectful and hostile towards the parents. Mine were caring individuals who did their best to help our family through a difficult and emotional time.
As you stated, we don’t know all of the details of what actually happened – it seems to have become a he said, she said situation. But I can’t blame a hospital for its protocol to protect newborns from leaving the ward. Why did he feel the need to argue and go out a stairwell instead of calmly asking to speak to the charge nurse to clear up the situation? If the doctor who gave him permission was present (as one of the articles stated) why didn’t he step forward to help clear things up? There was a case recently of a woman trying to walk out of a hospital with someone else’s baby claiming it to be her own. (I’m afraid I can’t remember where this was.) These protocols are there for the protection of the families and I’m surprised anyone with a newborn wouldn’t be grateful for those rules. Of course, surely the Kennedy’s would change their tune if someone had managed to walk out with their baby without someone intervening.
Natalie says
I haven’t read the articles on this, just seen the headlines. I believe that hospitals need to have some protocols in place in order to protect families. Kidnapping risks and abuse are real threats in some situations. Those aren’t the majority of families, however, and one thing that the medical establishment needs to work on is being respectful of patients. There is a tendency to treat adults as children, and for doctors and nurses to forget that despite their deep knowledge and years of training and experience, I am the person who will make informed decisions about my health and the health of my children, not them. I’ve had two hospital deliveries, and though I ultimately got what I needed and wanted out of the experiences, they didn’t come without some mild conflict. My hospital doesn’t say no to baby sleeping with mom and is very supportive of breastfeeding, but they do have the rule about not taking the baby out of the room in arms – it always needs to be in the rolling bassinet. They begin implementing certain protocols without really asking for consent and they make assumptions about the way you’d like to receive care. Overall, they were a wonderful staff of people, but they really are imposing their agendas and ideologies onto families, rather than working in partnership with families. If I want things to go differently than the hospital staff had planned, I have to advocate for myself, something that’s very difficult when one is in labor or has just given birth.
Wynona says
I haven’t heard about this news, just only now. Well, there’s nothing really wrong about what Douglas did. The nurses just really freaked out and exaggerated the incident. Anyway, thanks for sharing..