ORANGE PARK, FL (WJXT/CNN) - Joii Brown and her husband held onto their newborn son, Roman Phillips, after returning home from the hospital on Thursday.
They’re hoping he is still in good health.
Brown said she learned her son had been breastfed by a different woman at Orange Park Medical Center earlier that afternoon.
"I was really scared. It was shocking," Brown said.
The nurses took Brown's son to have a circumcision. Brown said the surgery normally takes 30 minutes, but she knew something was strange when the nurses didn't come back until an hour and a half later.
“These two nurses walked in and they said that they took my child in another girl's room and they mistakenly thought that was her child and not mine and she ended up breastfeeding him for two minutes," Brown recalled.
Brown was told the nurse didn't look at her son's wristband to see which child he was and that the mix-up was a human mistake.
"I know everybody makes mistakes, but this is something I feel like is more than just a mistake,” Brown explained. “Because just looking at a wristband, that's something really minor because all you had to do was look at the wristband and see that isn't her child."
The hospital released a statement saying: "Of course, the hospital will do everything we can to follow the family's wishes and support the family."
Brown said the hospital immediately ran tests on her son. Even so, now she fears he could get sick.
"My main concern is that it could have been something other than breast milk and that that could happen to anybody's child," Brown said.
Brown is hoping the nurse who made the mistake is held accountable.
The hospital told Brown that privacy laws prevent them from letting her know whether the woman who breastfed her son was on any type of medications.
The Brown family is now consulting with an attorney.
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