A woman will appear in court today charged with kidnapping after an alleged attempt to snatch two babies from Christchurch's St George's Hospital.
The woman posed as a hospital employee and tried to grab two newborns from the private hospital yesterday morning.
Hospital chief executive Tony Hunter said the woman entered a room in the maternity ward and found a father and a baby.
She asked to take the baby for blood tests, but the father replied that these had already been done.
He later realised this was suspicious and reported the incident to his wife and hospital staff.
"It's unusual behaviour," Mr Hunter told The Press.
"Normal people don't go uninvited into strangers' rooms and ask to take their babies for a blood test."
The baby girl's grandfather, John Flattery, told the newspaper it was a "shock" to hear of the attempted abduction.
He understood the intruder had looked "like a genuine midwife; she just looked the real article". The woman later entered a second room, which was occupied by a woman she knew distantly. She told the new mother she was a hospital employee.
Mr Hunter would not confirm whether the intruder had taken the woman's baby from the room, but said if she had, it had not left the department.
"I think she might have asked the mother if there was something she could wrap the baby in, but this was somebody she knew."
Staff found the intruder by the door to the mother's room and called the police about 10.30am.
The woman will appear in Christchurch District Court today on one charge of kidnapping.
Mr Flattery said hospital staff needed to be commended for their quick actions.
"If they hadn't been on to it, that baby was gone."
Mr Hunter said the hospital had not had an intrusion like this before.
