An hour and a half after enduring a C-section delivery at a Kamloops hospital, an Indigenous couple was exhausted but elated as they met their baby girl – a first child for both. But their joy was short-lived when an hour and a half after she was born, social workers came in to take Baby H, saying they’d had a report of neglect.

“They were shocked,” said the paternal grandfather, who questions how one could be labelled neglectful and have someone issue a birth alert to apprehend in just 90 minutes.

“Luckily the (maternal) grandmother was there and she held them off, at least for a while.”

APTN News isn’t naming the baby or the family as the child remains in the foster system.Two days later, on June 14, social workers came back, reportedly two hours late for a meeting that had been scheduled with the family.

But the mother was asleep from a sedative medical staff had administered.

When she awoke she learned her newborn was gone

~Melissa Ridgen APTN