It was comedy when Pam Halpert mistakenly nursed another new mother’s baby in a dark hospital room on The Office last night.

In real life, it’s cause for a lawsuit.

Jennifer Spiegel, a Chicago mother, is suing Evanston Hospital after a nurse mistakenly brought in the wrong day-old baby boy at 4 a.m. back in 2008.

As The Sun Times reported when the suit was filed last month:

…while no one was injured or sickened, the Chicago couple says the hospital should be held responsible for the mix-up. They are seeking at least $30,000 in damages. “And we hope this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” said Jennifer Spiegel, a teacher. Amy Ferguson, spokeswoman for NorthShore University HealthSystem, said the corporate office had not been notified of the lawsuit and had no comment. Lawrence Gartner, the former head of pediatrics at the University of Chicago, said he suspects mix-ups like the one alleged here happen from time to time, though lawsuits are rare. He said it would be unusual if it affected the mother-child bond. “In animals, they’re often very specific — mothers will only accept their own babies, but I don’t know that humans have any such characteristic,” said Gartner, who works with the La Leche League, a worldwide breast-feeding support organization.

I know firsthand that Gartner is right; the same mix-up happened to a friend and her newborn. A flurry of blood tests followed, but both Moms and babies turned out to be healthy and no legal papers were filed (even though my friend happens to be a lawyer).

On the Web site of The Boston Globe, the writer, editor and mother of five Lylah M. Alphonse (who also blogs about parenting at The 36-hour Day) questioned whether such a mix-up was all that concerning. “Awkward? Sure. Awful? Possibly,” she says. “But worth suing over? I don’t think so.”

She reminds us that “breast-feeding someone else’s baby used to be considered fairly normal,” though the wet nurses who did so were peasant women and slaves. At least one movie star, Salma Hayek, has publicly nursed an infant who was not her own. And in Michigan, Alphonse notes, a group of 25 mothers joined ranks last year to nurse an infant whose mother died minutes after he was born.

Alphonse is aware that “the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discourage women from nursing other people’s children, as does the La Leche League” for fear of transmission of diseases like H.I.V., syphilis and hepatitis. Add to that the security lapse that such a baby mix-up reveals. But even when baby and “wet nurse” are healthy, and the right baby goes home with the right mother, there is still the kind of “ick” factor that leads to lawsuits. And that, Alphonse argues, says more about social rules than nutritional ones.

She writes:

There’s little fuss over babies who are given breast milk that had been donated to a milk bank — even hospitals bank breast milk for premature or sick infants — which seems to indicate that the issue isn’t about milk vs. formula, but bottle vs. (another mother’s) breast. Is it the fact that our society still views breasts as sexual objects? Or is it about relationships — would it be more acceptable to nurse your niece or nephew instead of a stranger’s child? Sorry, Dads, this one is for the female readers out there (though feel free to weigh in, if you like): Would you breast-feed someone else’s baby?

And, if I might add, have you ever nursed a child who wasn’t yours? And how would you respond if you learned you had done so accidentally?