UK mum separated by force from newborn in Spain. AIBU to be shocked this is taking so long to resolve?

[wigglylines]

Poor woman, poor baby too. I can't imagine what she's going through.

Why would they drag it out so long? How long does it take to get a DNA test FFS?

Story here www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/british-woman-says-she-was-separated-from-newborn-daughter-in-spain

[Petition link removed by MNHQ as we don't allow them in AIBU or anywhere other than our Petitions topic]

thenumberseven I really am leaving now but thank you for being the voice of reason.

For all we know the dna results are in and it's more than likely that they are mother and daughter but there are other concerns we know nothing about.

yes all the talk of stolen babies is a tad hysterical. These things happened 35 years ago...

Reality is that the truth is likely closer to what the hospital are saying, that the baby was premature and its health was compromised by the mother not seeking medical help, thus there are concerns over its welfare.

I'm really sorry if I'm being a bit done here but what is it that they're actually suggesting this woman has done wrong?

She was pregnant. She had pregnancy notes. But they suspect what? That she gave birth to a stillborn and then stole someone else's baby?

Is that what they think happened?

A bit DUMB?

Why is it hysterical?
There are miscarriages of justice all the time. Or, even on a lower scale, heavy handedness and insensitivity.

I suspect that this case could have been handled better or more speedily.

I suspect that this case could have been handled better or more speedily.

I don't see how you can suspect anything given that you have no information of the facts in this case. All you have is what one person says is going on, which may or may not have much truth to it.

chaiselounger you're not being dumb. It's difficult to know because of course the hospital can't comment. We only have one side of the story
Spanish newspapers have not reported on this at all so all we have is what the mother is saying and it appears it doesn't add up.

i hate these stupid online petitions when we don't know all the facts. let the correct agencies do their jobs. there is obviously more to this than meets the eye. should Drs not act when behaviours seem suspicious, and the evidence does not appear to correlate to the patients story?

yes, maybe she did have a stillborn baby, even before leaving the UK - maybe she expressed her milk to keep production up, maybe she did steal/buy a baby to replace hers, who knows. These things do happen. So let the hospital and police do their jobs.

Unreasonable would be if they refused to let her Bf or see the baby at all and had her banged up in a cell awaiting developments. If she had free access to the baby at all times, she would be a flight risk (whether guilty or innocent) and that is a risk they cannot take.

Where the birth took place is a few minutes away from a very large perfectly equipped hospital where many people speak at least some English as lots of expats live in that area. No crappy roads to negotiate or difficulty getting to the hospital, a taxi would have had her there in minutes.

But would she necessarily have known that if her mother had only just moved into the area? Really the delay seems to have been a matter of a few hours at most, and if the baby was fine I'm not sure that I'd condemn her for being reluctant to try to find a maternity hospital after giving birth at 2 a.m.

This article in Spanish says the doctors believed the baby to be four or five days old and became suspisicous of her "strange attitude and contradictory answers"

www.diariosur.es/axarquia/201507/06/hospital-axarquia-custodia-bebe-20150706144424.html

They'd been in the area for a fortnight. If you are that far ahead in your pregnancy you'd check where hospital is as soon as possible.
I don't think she should be looking for a hospital after the birth but before.
Her waters broke at 1:30 could have been in hospital within minutes and given birth there.
They phoned a taxi the next day to be taken to the hospital to register the birth, could have done exactly the same thing when waters broke.

All this is just going round in circles. Hospital have concerns, we don't know if for baby's health, welfare, custody or what. Social services, police are involved.
I don'don't suppose they are going to all this trouble because she had the baby at home

If the reports are correct, the difficulty seems to be that the DNA test is for some reason the responsibility of the courts, and the courts hardly sit over the summer. Hospital staff are apparently saying that they have no idea when the tests will be back.

If this is purely an issue as to whether the child is her daughter, that is a ridiculous state of affairs. A DNA test can be done within a matter of hours, it must surely be in the baby's interests to resolve that as quickly as possible.

Exactly, according to that Spanish report which is the first to appear in Spanish, doctors became suspicious because she contradicted herself and baby seemed to have been born four or five days earlier.
She was told they had to run some tests but she just took off with the baby in the same taxi which had brought them to the hospital.

She said to the newspapers that she expected to just be able to register the birth at the hospital as that's how it's done in Britain

OK, so asduming she is genuinely the mother, surely you would all agree that it is inhumane to separate her from her newborn baby for so long if it turns out the hold up in obtaining results is purely beauracratic?

She has not been separated from the baby. We don't know that it is beurocratic. We don't know what information the hospital are handling.

I would call being unable to hold your newborn being separated, wouldn't you?

Are you a mum?

I would have found it unbearable.

I didn't ask if you thought it was beauracratic.

I said if you knew for sure the delay was solely beauracratic, would you agree the wait is inhumane?

Yes I am a mum, a devoted responsible one at that. A grandmother as well.
How is she not holding the baby if she is breastfeeding?

She only gets to do that once every 3 hours.

The rest of the time she is not able to hold her baby when the baby cries, or wants more milk, or just to be held.

I would call that being separated, and find it incredibly tough, wouldn't you?

I suspect they think she had already given birth in the UK, but someone had paid her to pretend she had given birth in Spain so she could traffick a child into the UK.

I suspect that's probably not the case and she just didn't go to hospital for 4-5 days. But that still raises big questions about whether she was acting in the interests of the child properly.

And TBH, I'd rather proper checks were done than we ended up with another little Adam floating down the Thames.

wiggly I would find all of those things upsetting, no-one is disputing that.

But you cannot just go around signing random petitions when you have no idea of the facts of a situation.

You seem to have a bit of mania for them - every thread I see by you is exhorting people to sign things on behalf of various causes, some more spurious than others.

A mania for petitions, really?

I call it compassion, personally.

FFS it is not compassionate to sit behind your laptop handwringing at stories from the Daily Mail.