Results tagged “baby”

A high-profile midwife who was featured in a New York cover story and the documentary The Business of Being Born is being sued by a Manhattan couple who blame her for their baby's death. The midwife, Carla Muhlhahn, is one of the most well-known midwives, and it's not the first time she's been sued; in 2003, she settled a $950,000 lawsuit after a baby was partially paralyzed. In the current lawsuit, Catherine and Ricardo McKenzie accuse Muhlhahn of gross negligence and recklessness during the delivery, which lasted three days in their West 113th Street apartment.

The NY Post reports that a baby decided to make things dramatic for her mother and playwright father: While in the backseat of a taxi, "Addison Proctor, 36, and his wife, Sally Schuiling, 35, were rushing from their Upper West Side apartment to NYU Medical Center when the baby's head popped out. With one more push, Alice Adeline Proctor entered the world." Aww—here's a picture of the happy family; Schulling said, "I scooped her up and put her on my chest, and she was breathing right away."

It's like Shark Week over here today. A reader just sent us this photo, taken Sunday at Brighton Beach, saying that this man plucked this baby shark right out of the shallow water with his bare hands. When we inquired about him throwing it back in so it could live, and grow, and eventually feed off of gold-chained locals, she told us, "I think he took it home to cook it" (shark fin soup?). He reportedly put the little guy in a plastic bag, departed, returned to the beach, and resumed sunbathing. Sigh, why did we even ask.

Yesterday afternoon, passers-by and workers around First Avenue and 62nd Street noticed a baby in a stroller—without an adult in sight. It turns out the toddler, no more than 18 months old, was apparently abandoned by her parents (or the couple caring for her); WCBS 2 reports, "Police say the child got caught in the middle of an argument between her parents," who were in a white Mazda. "The angry mother got out of the car and walked away. The father apparently took the child out of the car, and left her in a stroller on the curb. He then drove away." A restaurant owner said, "The carriage wasn't tied or anything, it could have gone in to the street, you think of all the horrible things." According to the Post, police responded to the scene after receiving numerous 911 calls (a woman was holding and comforting the baby when they got there) and are tracing "the little girl’s parents from a cash receipt left in the bag containing the goods... The receipt showed that a pair of baby shoes had recently been bought from the H&M store in the Queens Boulevard mall." Also not good: Leaving your baby in a stroller outside the restaurant where you are eating. Update: NY1 reports that the child's father, Edwin Rivera, has been arrested and faces charges of child abandonment and endangering the welfare of a child.

The pigeon gangs of Greenpoint are still at it! After one baby falcon was rescued from a bird-on-bird attack, our photographer Katie Sokoler informs us the violence is still going on. She tells us, "I came out of my apartment this morning and saw a baby falcon sitting on the railing of my stoop. It was so adorable but then suddenly a group of pigeons came down and started attacking it! I spent the whole morning kicking pigeon ass and finally captured the hurt falcon. But as I was walking back to my apartment, a woman ran up to me and told me that she saw a grown falcon down the street at McGorlick Park and it must be one of her babies. The falcon got frightened and jumped out of my hands and hid in some bushes by a church and now I can find the hurt lil' guy." Greenpoint, it's time to start a pigeon task force.

Will the pigeon bullying story be a plot line in an upcoming 30 Rock? The NY Post talked to Morgan Pitts, who rescued the baby falcon from the gang of birds in Greenpoint; he's an assistant prop master at the show, and his first course of action was to bring the little one over to Silvercup Studios, where a friend's wife at the Animal Medical Center was called. The American kestrel has been named Alice Cooper for the markings around its eyes (a moniker that's bound to toughen it up), and it's sex is not yet known—one of the vets saying, "I love this bird. He or she is so cute." Agreed.

Rats are still keeping it real in the Bronx, where a two-year-old girl was taken to the hospital with five rodent bites after her mother heard her screaming in her crib. Jonnique McKinney tells the Daily News, "She was sleeping in her bed and she woke up screaming." Exterminators had plugged up the radiator with steel wool in her Clay Avenue apartment, but nothing can stop a hungry rat with an appetite for human babies. While hitting the Google machine for this story, we learned about a horrific incident that happened last month in Louisiana, where an infant girl was found dead in her crib after rats ate away at her face and limbs, then left bloody rodent footprints all over her sheets. Anyway! McKinney filed a lawsuit against her building owner last year, when her daughter was bitten, but it's only come to light now because the landlord sued the exterminator this week. Still, aren't you glad you finally know about all this? Sweet dreams!

If you thought his troubles with designer Jack McCollough were resolved, you were wrong. Kiefer Sutherland had been waiting to find out if the misdemeanor assault charges against him would be dropped until just now. Good thing we weren't holding our breath. TMZ reports that Sutherland is totally in the clear for the incident that took place back in May. An incident that would have been way more interesting if the actor were more Jack Bauer in real life, or even if he channeled his previous Christmas tree attack. So let's get on to the juicier Kiefer news. Page Six reports that he was spotted making out in public! With his girlfriend! Stars, they're just like us but with headlines. He and Siobhan Bonnouvrier lost themselves in a "hot make-out session" on on the lawn of Hudson River Park near 12th Street this past Saturday. An eye witness told the rag, "They had their hands all over each other. They really got into it. One young mom breast-feeding her baby nearby was like, 'Go Kiefer!'" Our sources who were on the scene with said breast-feeding mom say there was even a thong-flashing involved.

This week's NY Times Real Estate cover story is about "accidental sellers"—people whose "life has gotten in the way — in the form of a job upheaval, imminent offspring, holy matrimony or the dissolution thereof." There are various anecdotes (like the couple who hasn't sold their Brooklyn place and are now in Switzerland where cost of living is really expensive), and the one that caught our eye was the dilemma of artist-art professors Elizabeth Demaray and Hugo Bastidas: They are expecting a baby next month and, if their two-bedroom condo at 116th and Lenox Avenue doesn't sell, they have outfitted the walk-in closet as a nursery. Why? Because Bastidas uses one of the bedrooms as a studio: "The 1,200-square-foot space is not big enough for the couple, his canvases, a baby and an exceptionally vocal Bengal cat that must be sequestered in its own bedroom at night if the humans are to sleep." Demaray says, "If we wind up staying, we’re going to have to find a studio space for both of us, probably somewhere toward Lower Manhattan or possibly Jersey City. But the cat won’t work in the closet." See the couple and their cat in this picture—looks like Bastidas is practicing his baby carry with the cat!

Awww, the Wildlife Conservation Society has released the first photos of the new Bronx Zoo sea lion pup! Born to mom Clarice on June 23rd, you can see the little one (and the other sea lions) get fed at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. We have yet to hear back about the name or sex of this new pup, what do you think (s)he should be called?

Hey, pretend it's the '50s and you're reading this article in a newspaper titled "Who’s That With Baby at the Y? Why, It’s Daddy." Wait, shouldn't daddy be at the office with his briefcase while mommy is with the baby at the Y, or preferably in the kitchen making dinner and starching shirts?

A Queens woman who ran a day care operation out of her home was arrested for child endangerment after an 11-month-old boy died in her care. The Post reports, "James Farrior was in the living room of caretaker Kristal Khan's home in Ozone Park with her two children, ages 3 and 4, at about 11 a.m. when the sitter went into another room...When she returned, she found James head-first in the bucket, which was three-quarters full." A neighbor told the NY Times, "A fireman was running down the street with a baby in his arms. The baby was totally limp and just hanging. Right away I knew the baby was in trouble." While Khan did not have a license to run a day care operation, the Times explains "the state requires day care providers to be licensed if they have more than two children — not counting their own — in their care for three or more hours a day on a regular basis." The ME's office is conducting an autopsy today. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has warned that drowning dangers to children are not limited to pools but also include buckets, toilets, fish tanks and more.

For the "If it's too good to be true..." file: Six New York mothers have sued a company that offered 99.9% accurate gender testing. For $275 and a blood sample (via a kit), Baby Gender Mentor claims to give gender testing to women as early as 5 weeks pregnant; the Post points out that's 2-3 months before a gender may be detected by sonogram or "amniocentesis and typically the cutoff point for abortions -- although no one suggested in the court papers that was the reason they took the test." Well, here's one's plaintiff's story: Keven Duffy wanted to "surprise her husband with the news that they were going to have a son. The couple already had a daughter, and was hoping for a boy for 'family balancing.'" The company said she was having a boy, but "a sonogram revealed they were having a girl...The flip-flop 'caused stress' in her marriage...and she and her husband have since divorced." The plaintiffs' lawyer also points out that 10-20% of the company's clients claim wrong results. Related: How Asians in the U.S. may be embracing sex selection techniques (IVF or sperm sorting) or abortion to ensure having male children.

It's been a baby boom on NYC Transit! On Thursday, a woman gave birth to a baby girl on a Queens-bound R train—and on Friday, another woman gave birth to a baby girl on the B61 bus! Can babies on the LIRR or Metro-North be next?

An eleven-week-old boy in the Bronx has become the fifth swine flu fatality in NYC, according to his family. Steven Montanez's mother, 28-year-old Gissele Montañez, says her baby seemed fine when she left him in the care of her sister Thursday afternoon. But he was found dead about an hour after he fell asleep at 3 p.m. Montanez's sister tells the Daily News, "I went in to check up on him, I turned him around and he was purple. He was a completely healthy baby. The Health Department told us he died because of swine flu." (Officials at the Health Department have not yet officially confirmed that the H1N1 virus caused Steven's death.) His father, Louis Montanez, is devastated, telling the News, "I have nothing to live for anymore. You don't know how painful this is. We're going through such a bad situation right now."

Bristol Palin, Alaskan First Daughter/Mother of First Grandson, is now a teen ambassador for the Candie's Foundation, which has the "mission to educate America's youth about the devastating consequences of teenage pregnancy." Which means the teen mom appeared on Good Morning, America and the Today Show to say, "Regardless of what I did personally, I just think that abstinence is the only ... 100 percent foolproof way to prevent pregnancy... It's a hard choice, but it's the safest choice and it's the best choice." Today is National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, after all.

A NJ woman filed a lawsuit against Jersey City's Christ Hospital for losing the body of her stillborn baby. Kalynn Moore had given birth in December; according to the Jersey Journal, "Arrangements were made to pick up the remains for a burial on Jan. 2, but when representatives from the funeral parlor arrived at the hospital, the remains couldn't be located in the morgue." Hospital officials admitted that the baby's corpse was probably thrown out in the trash; police searched garbage dumps in NJ and Pennsylvania to no avail, leading them to suspect the body was incinerated. The lawsuit notes that the incident has left Moore unable to get closure on her son's death. The state has already fined the hospital over $20,000 for "failing in its morgue operations for bodies and remains."

The Snuggie phenomena has just gone too far. NYMag has a frightening image of a Peekaru, aka a Snuggie for Park Slope moms, of which they accurately react to with, "Ahhhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhh! Oh my GOD! What is that THING?!?! It looks like a two-headed monster! Oh, good Lord, it's a mom-and-baby Snuggie." On the upside, this will certainly control the stroller traffic on 7th Avenue, and surely this contraption can only prevent public displays of breastfeeding (for those Brooklynites who frown upon such an act). Would you rather see these or Bugaboos on the street?

A pair of new mother are planning to sue Brooklyn's Brookdale Hospital for allegedly getting their babies mixed up. Shaquana Brown and Shatiesha Brown, who are not related, both gave birth to little girls on January 31. However, Shatiesha Brown was being monitored afterwards and wasn't allowed to see her baby, Aniya, for 24 hours—during which time, the infant was brought to Shaquana Brown, who said, "I was happy. I was holding her. Her father was holding her. I was breastfeeding her." But then a nurse told her later that the baby wasn't hers (there was also an incident at the nursery window between both Brown families, arguing over the baby) and it apparently took the hospital 30 minutes to find her baby. Shatiesha Brown was also devastated, because little Aniya, having fed on another woman's breastmilk, was rejecting her own mother's milk. Shatiesha Brown's lawyer told WABC 7, "There are so many ways to prevent this from happening and the hospital failed in every way."

During three police officers' "routine Counter-Terrorism patrol" at Penn Station yesterday morning, they saw a woman in need of help and it turned out that 29-year-old Marie Booth was going into labor. Officers Deborah Garbut, Marie Medina and Ernest Huang, along with Amtrak police officer Karen Schrof, helped deliver a baby boy to Booth and her husband Jonathan two minutes later. The new dad told NY1 they were on their way to the Bronx from NJ, "As soon as we got to Penn Station I told her I would just call an ambulance to see if we could get some assistance." But the Marie Booth said, "When I got off the escalator that's when I was like you know what, forget the ambulance and everything else. I'm gonna have the baby right here... I didn't care who was there, who was watching me. I was thinking, 'Just get the baby out!'" The Booths named the boy Caesar Penn; he and mom were taken to Bellevue for evaluation.

Start your "awww"s now: The Bronx Zoo released a photograph and video of one of its newest addition: A baby Matschie's tree kangaroo! The joey was actually born on July 4 last year, but since they are delivered in an embryonic state, they crawl back into their mothers' pouches for another 39-41 weeks. This little guy started exploring his home in the Jungleworld exhibit this week, with mom Arboroo nearby. In this video, you'll see him emerge from Arboroo's pouch!

Famous Alaskan teen parents Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston have confirmed their break-up to the Associated Press. The couple's relationship and pregnancy became an unavoidable talking point since Palin's mother, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, was the 2008 Republican VP candidate; the couple made a very public appearance at the Republican National Convention and their baby Tripp was born on Dec. 27. Today, Johnston said that they decided to mutually break up "a while ago" but his sister Mercede told Star there were bigger problems, "Levi tries to visit Tripp every single day, but Bristol makes it nearly impossible. She tells him he can't take the baby to our house because she doesn't want him around 'white trash'!" Bristol Palin, who just last month said they were getting married, is "devastated" about the Star article and said, "Unfortunately, my family has seen many people say and do many things to 'cash in' on the Palin name. Sometimes that greed clouds good judgment and the truth."

A family already mourning was dealt a terrible blow: Jersey City's Christ Hospital apparently threw away the body of their dead newborn with the trash. Grieving mother Kalynn Moore told WCBS 2 that the funeral home went to pick of the body, but were unable to find it, "I looked at them and said, 'Excuse me?' And they were like. 'We can't find your son.'" Her cousin added that she accompanied the baby to the morgue—"He had ID bracelets on both ankles. There was a tag on the t-shirt, and a tag on the blankets." The hospital told the Jersey Journal that baby was stillborn on December 21 (the family says the baby was born alive and declared dead 20 minutes later). The body was apparently thrown out by the time the funeral home inquired on January 2. Police are now searching garbage dumps in NJ and Pennsylvania and Christ Hospital said, "Our thoughts and prayers are with the family, and we hope to bring this unfortunate situation to a resolution as soon as possible."

Time to wait for hospitals to announce their New Year's babies! One contender for the first baby of 2009—in the U.S.— is Edgar Rafael Moreno, born just one second after midnight at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, NJ. We eagerly await more stories about New Year's babies—and hope to see photos of Mayor Bloomberg visiting the New Yorkers while wearing a fetching sweater. UPDATE: Aha! The Daily News reports there are two newborns vying for title of NYC's first 2009 baby: Zenia Hussain (7 pounds, 13 ounces) was born at 12:10 a.m. at Flushing Hospital Center, while Grace Pak (6 pounds, 3 ounces) was reportedly born at 12:09 a.m. at the New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens. And, yes, Mayor Bloomberg will be visiting them.

The staff at North Shore University Hospital set up a webcam so Air Force Captain Mike Schaefer, currently in Southwest Asia, could be by his wife Gannon's side when she gave birth to their child last Sunday. The couple lives in Chicago, but Newsday reports that "Gannon Schaefer came to Merrick, where her family lives, so she could deliver and have the support of her parents and siblings." The webcam was set up in the delivery room and Captain Scahefer said, "Oh honey, congratulations, he's beautiful. I can see him, I can see my little man." Little Jackson Jeffrey Schaefer, 7 pounds and 4 ounces, will meet his dad on New Year's Eve at MacArthur Airport.

Aww, there are more details about the baby born in the back of a Brooklyn cab. According to the Daily News, a "panicked taxi driver flagged down two cops while two more arrived to help" 30-year-old Fang Zhao, who was screaming in the cab. Officer Kerryann Douglass told WCBS 2, "She had sweatpants on, and all of a sudden we saw the baby's head coming through the sweatpants. I was like: 'Oh my word.' So I pulled off her pants and out came baby." Douglas and her partner Jobed Serrano caught the baby, and Douglas cleared the baby's airway. Zhao's husband, who tried to get home in time but couldn't when his car service cab didn't show for 45 minutes, said his first words to baby Elina—who is doing well, as is mom— were "You are looking at your daddy now, but you scared your daddy today."

The Health Department has released their annual report on baby names in New York City, and among newborn boys the name "Jayden" is (almost) number one with a bullet, ranking #2 overall and #1 among black and Hispanic babies. Jayden wasn't even in the top ten in 2006, and baby name expert Laura Wattenberg shares a theory with City Room about the his stunning rise in popularity: Two years ago, one Jayden James Federline entered the world stage, the offspring of recording artist Britney Spears. “Britney Spears seems to have shifted the standard spelling. That name used to be spelled every which way, but now the ‘y’ spelling has become dominant,” Wattenberg says.

A month after VP candidate Sarah Palin announced her daughter was pregnant, the baby's father is speaking to the media elite--the AP reporter outside his house. Levi Johnston, 18, who dropped out of high school to become an apprentice electrician, said he and Bristol Palin, 17, "both love each other" and weren't pressured, "We were planning on getting married a long time ago with or without the kid. That was the plan from the start." Also, Palin fans can send blue booties with rifles on them: "I'm looking forward to having him. I'm going to take him hunting and fishing." And while Johnston said Barack Obama "seems like a good guy. I like him," he's rooting for John McCain and Palin: "I just hope she wins. She's my future mother-in-law. She better win."

Jets coach Eric Mangini gave his newborn son the middle name "Brett" after quarterback Brett Favre. Zack Brett Mangini, 7 pounds and 13 ounces, was born on Friday, which is also Favre's birthday! Mangini apparently promised to bestow Brett on his unborn child when the Jets were wooing Favre, who said, "The odds of the child being born on the same day as my birthday, I don't know what the odds are ... The odds, in some respects, are a lot like me. What were the odds of me ever coming to the Jets?" Mangini's two other sons' middle names are also related to football: Son Jake Harrison's middle name is after New England safety Rodney Harrison (Mangini worked for the Patriots) and Luke Wiliam's middle name is after Pats coach Bill Belichick. Gang Green faces the Bengals today at 1 p.m.

Former TV producer Julie Horner Lankamp was found dead in her Gold Street apartment Tuesday with "her crying young daughter clutching her legs," as the Daily News sensationally puts it. Relatives say they hadn't spoken with Lankamp since Sunday and police don't know how long the two-year-old had been stranded with her mother's body, which had begun to decompose. Lankamp had a broken jaw, bruises, and dried blood pooled near her nose and mouth, but the city medical examiner doesn't believe Lankamp's injuries were caused by a beating. An empty glassine envelope with cocaine residue was found near her corpse, and investigators say her injuries may have been caused by a fall after a drug overdose. Results of a toxicology report are pending, but in the meantime police are looking to interview her ex-husband, who was arrested at the end of last year "for attacking her with a chair while using their child as a human shield," a source tells the News.