An occurrence of childbirth, a time for celebration, became a horror show for a mother in Lebanon, Tennessee. Jennifer Melton gave birth to her son, Nate, at University Medical Center. After her baby was taken for a routine physical, Jennifer was informed that the procedure they had performed on her newborn son was a frenulectomy. She was perplexed and shocked when she realized that doctors had performed surgery on the wrong baby. “Essentially they took our child who was healthy from the room and cut his mouth,” she exclaimed. “At that point, I began to cry hysterically.”
The surgical procedure known as frenulectomy is performed when a baby is having difficulty nursing, and “doctors clip the small part of skin under a baby’s tongue,” as reported by Pix 11. However, in this case, the infant’s tongue was fully functional and did not require the procedure. Jennifer’s attorney, Clint Kelly, was not at all pleased by this mishap and said, “There’s no excuse for operating on the wrong baby, none. It’s recklessness. There’s no excuse for cutting on a healthy child. There’s no excuse for mixing up babies at a hospital.” The doctor who made the mistake admitted his error and didn’t attempt to make any excuses. Instead, he took responsibility and apologized, as documented in his hospital report, “I had asked for the wrong infant. I had likely performed the procedure on an infant different than the one I intended to…and I admitted my mistake and apologized.”
Jennifer is highly concerned about the impact of this mistake on her son’s future. She fears that the procedure could cause speech or eating problems for him. Kelly said, “The concern here is this was a healthy baby that was supposed to leave the hospital but instead was harmed by the hospital.” Unfortunately, the hospital has declined to provide any comments regarding the incident.
The doctor’s carelessness is unforgivable. This error should never have occurred as there are safeguards in place to prevent it. While it is possible that the baby may not be impacted by this procedure in the future, it could have been far more severe, and the child could face greater difficulties in life because of the doctor’s laziness.
