Beyonce pain for patients

New York, Jan. 10: The couple were visiting their twin daughters in the neonatal intensive care unit at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on Friday night, as they have done daily since the babies' premature birth on December 28.

But when they tried to leave the sixth-floor unit to go home to Brooklyn at 11pm, the new mother, Rozz Nash-Coulon, recalled, a burly security guard suddenly blocked their way.

The familiar area outside the neonatal unit had been transformed: partitions had been put up, the maternity ward windows were completely covered, and even the hospitals' security cameras had been taped over with paper. Guards with Secret Service-style earpieces roamed the floor.

"We were told we could walk no further," Nash-Coulon said on Monday. When she and her husband, Neil, demanded an explanation, she added, the guard claimed, unconvincingly, "'Well, they're handling hazardous materials'," even as a large group of people screened from view were passing through the main hallway he had declared off-limits.

It was just the first of a series of indignities that they and several other non-celebrity maternity patients say they experienced over the weekend, as Lenox Hill Hospital went all-out to protect the privacy of Beyonc� Knowles and Jay-Z, whose daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, was born there on Saturday.

At one point, another father, Edgar Ramirez, 25, said, security guards kept him out of the neonatal unit for three hours while his wife and newborn were waiting for him. At another point on Saturday, a guard declared that "the floor is on lockdown", Nash-Coulon said, and told her that if she left the neonatal unit, she would not be allowed back in to see her babies.

"It was just really disgusting," said Nash-Coulon.

Anne Silverman, a spokesperson for Lenox Hill said the hospital had received no formal complaint about security measures, while taking care not to confirm or deny the birth of Blue Ivy, who was celebrated in a rap song released on Jay-Z's social website on Monday as "the most beautiful girl in the world".

Silverman denied reports that the couple had paid more than $1 million to rent and redecorate a wing of the hospital as a private labour and delivery suite. But she noted that, like several other New York hospitals, Lenox Hill has "reinstated executive suites", subject to availability, and at a price she would not specify.