Offers swamp hospital for abandoned baby

MONTREAL, July 10 (UPI) -- A hospital west of Montreal is being swamped with offers of a home for a newborn boy abandoned there this week, officials said.

"There have been so many calls, the nurses are tired of answering the telephone," Lakeshore General Hospital spokeswoman Marie-Josee Labrosse told the Gazette newspaper.

Nurses nicknamed the boy Baby July after receiving him Monday. A woman asked a hospital employee at a door to hold the baby while she parked her car but she never returned.

The child still had its umbilical cord attached and police said they believe the woman who left the baby was the child's mother, the report said. In an appeal for her to come forward, police said they likely wouldn't charge her since she had left the child at a responsible place and hadn't endangered it.

Youth protection worker Gerald Savoie told the newspaper if the mother or immediate family member doesn't turn up, the baby will be placed in foster care and offered for adoption.

"This person had the reflex to bring the baby to the hospital -- that is extraordinary," Savoie said.