Newborn Medical Mix-Up: Baby Almost Died in Mom's Arms
Baby mistakenly given 400 times the dose of morphine usually given to infants.
Aug. 25, 2010 — -- A beaming Jessica Blischke sat in the hospital last year, holding one of her three newborn triplets. Then, without warning, something went terribly wrong.
"I looked down and Taylee went purple," Blischke told "Good Morning America." "Her eyes rolled back in her head and her neck went slack and, just, she unlatched. It's incomprehensible to talk about because it's just like she died in my arms. She just stopped breathing.
"You can't talk, you can't move, you just are in absolute terror because you know your child is dying and you just ... you don't know what to do," she said.
Doctors revived the newborn baby girl, but she was forced to cling to life on a breathing tube.
The doctors at Mission Hospital in California did not know what caused the collapse until Taylee tested positive for high levels of opiates; chemicals found in drugs such as heroin and morphine.
The Blischkes, who live outside Seattle, Wash., say doctors turned their attention to Jessica, who they assumed had been using drugs and passed the toxins on to the baby through her breast milk.
But as quickly as she was accused, Blischke was vindicated by two living, breathing clues, her other daughters. When doctors tested Tasha and Tessa for opiates, results came back negative. Blischke was breastfeeding the triplets, so all the sisters would have tested positive had she been a drug user.
An investigation found that a nurse had accidentally mixed up Blischke's and Taylee's intravenous lines. The baby was receiving the morphine intended for the mother, who was recovering from a painful C-section.
The newborn had been given 400 times the amount recommended for a baby.
"There should be no way that a very small IV line of a four and a half pound baby should be confused with that of a full-grown woman," Blischke's husband, Todd said. "That should not happen."
"[The nurse] was at the end of a very long 12-hour shift, she had been working multiple 12-hour shifts and mistakes get made more easily when medical staff are overtired," Blischke said.
Related Stories
ABC News Live