‘Truly horrific’: the stories of five people affected by the NHS maternity scandal
In this report by the Guardian’s social affairs correspondent, Jessica Murray, five families recount the devastating consequences of failures in maternity care at Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust.
Among them is Sarah Andrews, whose daughter, Wynter, died in 2019 at the Queen’s Medical Centre from hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy – a loss of oxygen flow to the brain – which could have been prevented had staff delivered her earlier. Sharing her story, she said:
double quotation markI went into labour and I was having contractions, and for six days, I was basically told to stay at home. I didn’t feel like I had any other choice. And then in hospital, the care was just beset by failures.
I actually said to my husband I felt like I’d be better off dead than in the situation I was in … It was truly horrific. When they eventually called the emergency C-section and opened me up, the smell of infection filled the room and that’s when they realised that Wynter was stuck in my pelvis. All the warning signs of infection were there.
Me and Gary had to watch for 23 minutes while they failed to resuscitate her. We had staff come visit us in the bereavement suite and they said it was one of those things, that sometimes babies die. One said to us: ‘If we listen to every mother’s concerns, we’d be overrun.’ They’re telling us that they can’t see anything that’s gone wrong. And a year later, at the inquest, the coroner rules that it’s a clear and obvious case of neglect.”
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