I watched a movie about that happening once. A true story. The mixup got discovered because one of the babies was quite ill and later blood tests revealed it couldn't be the father or the mother's child. So I guess it has happened. I think it the movie I saw the nurse did it on purpose for some bizarre reason.
After I had my own baby, though, I wondered how the mother could not have known. I saw my son for an hour or so to breastfeed and then they took him to the nursery for tests. My son had a specific receiving blanket (mine not the hospital's) and a specific balloon tied to his basinette. I left him in a certain spot in the nursery. When I went to get him for the next feeding, I went to the spot, saw the same baloon and receiving blanket, looked in the basinette and nearly had a heart attack becasue I knew instantly that was not my baby! They had taken my son for more blood tests and another mother who coincidentally had the same baloon and receiving blanket had pushed her baby's basinette into the exact same spot where my baby had been.
After that I just didn't understand how a mother could not know her own baby. I could even recognize my baby by smell. His skin smelled exactly like mine. I could tell my baby's cry from all the other's when I was down the hall in my hospital bed and they opened the nursery door. It was weird. The only way I could see it happening is if the mother was unconscious at delivery and they took the baby away without her ever seeing or holding it. That almost never happens nowadays. Maybe it happened more in the 50's.
Cog (believes in trusting mother's instincts)
