WHERE'S YOUR BABY?!

Remember that ID bracelet they put on Lorelei in the last post? She also had one on her ankle with a great big security tag, not unlike the magnetic variety on merchandise in stores. Same principle here. If you take the baby too close to a door, it sets off an alarm alerting the staff not only that a baby is being stolen, but exactly which room the baby is being stolen from. This is a good system. Generally.

We hadn't given much thought to the hospital security system because Lorelei was really never out of our sight. See, I am a night person. I am (mostly) happy to take the night shift and sleep in fits and starts in accordance with Lorelei's whims. To take the edge off that "mostly," Sean gets up a bit earlier so I can get a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep in the morning. This system works for us. So, she was never even in the hospital nursery without us. (We even went with her when she needed to be weighed and such. We'd be hovering in our jammies and one of the nurses would say, "First baby..." This was not a question.)

Because the hospital has an overly active legal department, you cannot carry a baby in the halls. Instead, she has to be in an aquarium like enclosure like this:

One morning at the hospital Lorelei was being particularly vocal. Sean didn't want her to wake me so he took the aquarium out for a stroll. Perhaps you see where this is going...

I was in a deep sleep when three nurses burst into the room screaming, "WHERE'S YOUR BABY?! WHERE'S YOUR BABY?!" My reaction quickly went like this: 

Confusion.

Panic. 

Terror.

Luckily, Sean heard all the alarms and was curious about the commotion. He sauntered up the hall and was nearly tackled by the nursing staff. Apparently he had wandered a bit too close to one of the exits. The funny part is, I didn't know he had tripped an alarm until later. I thought the nurse just stopped by to check on Lorelei and this was her reaction when she didn't see her immediately. I kept thinking, "Boy, they really need to work on her people skills."