Susan, a 34-year-old Streamwood resident, is the proud new mother of an 8-pound, 8-ounce baby boy named Andrew.
But this article is the only birth announcement Susan plans on seeing in the newspaper.
In fact, she nixed plans to put up a stork or a bunch of plastic balloons in her yard, as her neighbors have done.
To do that would be “calling attention to ourselves that there is a new baby in the house,” Susan said. “Somebody could come and take the child.”
She is one of a handful of mothers who have given birth at Hoffman Estates Medical Center in the past month and who are subject to a new and fairly uncommon hospital policy.
In the interest of security, the hospital will no longer give parents a form to fill out birth information for newspapers. The traditional listing of births, which often includes parents’ full names, hometowns and even addresses, might tip off would-be kidnappers, officials fear.
And if the hospital mailed the announcements to the news media, it could be held liable in the event of an abduction, officials said. So the hospital now is leaving that task up to parents.
Although they admit the chances are slim that a baby would be abducted as a result of such publicity, hospital officials decided to adopt the policy anyway.
“It is a sad comment on the state of affairs in the world today, even out here,” said Jim Bozikis, spokesman for the medical center, which just changed its name from Humana Hospital-Hoffman Estates.
It’s not that there have been many kidnappings based on newspapers’ birth listings. “The incidence . . . is very low,” Bozikis said. “We’re just trying to be proactive on this.”
During the last 10 years, there have been 42 infant abductions from homes or other non-hospital locations in the United States, said John Rabun, vice president and chief operating officer of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Arlington, Va.
And of those 42 cases, three have been directly linked to a birth announcement in the paper, said Rabun, whose organization prompted the Hoffman Estates center to change its announcement policy.
Rabun, who trains hospital staff nationwide in infant security, said that while the Hoffman Estates center may be overreacting a bit, the idea is a smart one.
“It’s just like funeral announcements, when you don’t give the address of the deceased unless someone is watching the house,” Rabun said. “It’s horrible, but it’s the real world.”
While there hasn’t been a groundswell of hospitals that have stopped the service of birth announcements altogether, there has been a concerted effort nationwide to limit the information that is released, Rabun said.
Omitting addresses and even parents’ full names is a way to get the word out without releasing potentially harmful information.
In the Chicago area, the Hoffman Estates center seems to be the exception in stopping birth announcements, a staple of the small-town press.
“In the small community, (birth announcements) are clearly a long-standing tradition that goes back well before the turn of the century,” said Richard Schwarzlose, associate dean at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
“That’s news in a small town,” Schwarzlose said. “It did build a sense of community.”
Officials at Elmhurst Memorial Hospital see their announcement service as furthering the small-town, community feeling in Elmhurst.
“People are anxious to let people know they had a girl or boy, especially in a town like Elmhurst,” said hospital spokeswoman Paula Frey.
But Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn has never released birth information in its 32 years of existence because of concerns about patient confidentiality.
A more common practice used by several hospitals, including Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village, Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights and Central Du Page Hospital in Winfield, is to give parents the option of filling out a birth announcement form.
“Parents know about the risk, but they want their friends to know about the birth; they have to weigh that,” said Northwest spokeswoman Kim Bowman.
In the past, at least half of the more than 200 mothers giving birth each month at the Hoffman Estates center chose to fill out the form.
But the change is a “stand we have to take,” said Jo Anne Boros, the director of mother and infant services. “It makes you think twice.”
For her part, Susan is opting for a more labor-intensive method: “Anyone that we want to know will be notified that we have a new baby through mailing our own announcement,” she said.
