201 babies and 9 women died, 94 babies with life changing injuries, all avoidable

So am I leli, I had missed your post upthread.

leli, my god. I'm so terribly sorry.

Difficult to hear a man preach about pain relief in labour.
But I'd be interested in reading the full context of his research.
For although epidurals are 'mostly' safe- there are many cases of hyper stimulation - seems to be more in the US. Which begs the question - are UK obs and MWs advanced enough in their training around the risks of epidural and other drugs that advance/or stall labour.

The recent news around birth scandals makes it clear (and includes cases of pitocin misused) that so so much further research is needed.

It shouldn’t be natural childbirth at all costs I breed animals and there comes a certain point where they require intervention and I wouldn’t let my dog go through unnecessary suffering or risk losing her or her pups. We all just probably like the same consideration as humans

I gave birth at Telford in November 2021. They may have changed their policies, done more training and whatever else, but a significant amount of their midwives still have a thorough disdain for women and/or mothers. When your midwives seem to find birthing mothers to be irritating and ignore them when they ask for help as I experienced, no amount of policies in the world can make that a safe environment to give birth.

Leli. I'm so sorry

Leli. My heart for you 💕 so sorry.

leli PurplePansy05 and every woman who's been reminded of dreadful experiences at the hands of maternity "care" in the NHS.

We must not let this slip - the government must pursue this and force the NHS to change.

leli 💐

Happened to me 30 years ago. Cruelty, neglect, baby death, lying, cover up. I did all I could, two years of campaigning. One doctor apologised to me personally. The inquest was powerful. The Chief Executive cared not a jot and I am sorry to say that midwives and junior doctors lied at the inquest. A consultant subsequently left the Trust in disgust. My marriage broke up. I survived with my two older children. This report has brought it all back in technicolour........

I salute Rhiannon and Kayleigh. Very brave. I send my love to all affected. RIP to the tragic babies and mothers who lost their lives. And courage for those who continue to look after those disabled.

I have never been able to trust the NHS since and this too has brought problems. So many people idealise this variable, often cruel, often deeply inefficient and negligent organisation.

What makes doctors and nurses lie at an inquest?

It turned out that in my case the loony, negligent, incompetent and cruel consultant had also sexually assaulted another patient so ultimately he was dealt with.

But not a word of apology from the Trust.

Given my time again I would call in the lawyers instantly and slam the Trust for every penny which I would donate to a baby charity.

I won't sleep tonight. It's taken me back 30 years.

Apologies, I've missed the key paragraph in my post above - to even try to imagine that deepest fear becoming true like it happened to all these poor families is absolutely horrific. I am so incredibly sorry to all of them for the pain and grief they hsve to live with every single day. It's just unbearable that they've been failed so badly by the very people who were there to look after them and their babies.

I read this report and I can't even find the right words.

I suffered from recurrent miscarriages before having my son and also had unexpected complications with him in the third trimester, all resulting in a planned CS.

I have PTSD and anxiety now because of all this and even though he's here safely, I still have terrors thinking about the what ifs, all the things that could've gone wrong, CS being refused and DS dying. My brother was born sleeping due to an undisgnosed illness and negligence that was never admitted. Ever since then, the fear has always been there. My mother has never been the same. So this issue strikes very close to my heart.

Rhiannon and Kayleigh, you are two very, very brave women. If you are reading this, please know that you have your village here and that we all support you and are grateful for your determination. Your beautiful children's legacy will live forever.

To Donna Ockenden, I read how deeply you were affected by preparing this report and yet you kept going to deliver for all mothers and babies. Massive respect for this.

I'm so sorry for all the families affected directly and also those who are traumatised now realising they may have had a near miss at Shrewsbury and Telford. It's absolutely awful and tragic

This should've never happened. What needs to happen for this to stop? There isn't enough money, there aren't enough midwives or consultants, and alongside some fantastic members of staff at maternity units across the whole country, there are some vile ones who should never be allowed to work with mothers or babies. What can be done if we're in such trouble already? This isn't just Shrewsbury, the same story happened in Cwm Taf in Wales recently and there's a lot more.

I have just wrote a lengthy description of my two horrible childbirths on GN.It was52 and nearly 50 years ago now, not at Shrewsbury, but my heart goes out to those poor mothers and babies, I thought those days were over.

Only a man could come out with something like that.

Childbirth is a funny old thing, honestly none of mine hurt that much, I certainly wasn't screaming in pain for the most part, and perhaps is why I wasn't believed, I wasn't acting correctly. Everyone's experience is different and no more should mine be used as a yardstick than the woman who had an epidural from the get go.

I have a theoretical risk associated with an epidural which wouldn't be discovered until the needle went in, my birth plan had in big letters that they had to consult my notes and information from the consultant before considering any intervention.

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1199156/Why-mothers-pain-childbirth--male-expert-midwifery.html? in 2009 by a male midwife who wrote text books and retired not so long ago.

More women should endure the pain of childbirth because anaesthetic drugs undermine the mother’s bond with her baby, an expert said yesterday.

Dr Denis Walsh said the agony of labour should be considered a ‘rite of passage’ and a ‘purposeful, useful thing’.

The pain prepared women for the demands of motherhood, he argued.

Dr Walsh, associate professor in midwifery at Nottingham University, criticised the ‘epidural epidemic’ sweeping the NHS, and said maternity units should abandon routine pain relief and embrace a ‘working with pain’ approach.

an article for Evidence Based Midwifery, published by the Royal College of Midwives, Dr Walsh said the NHS was too quick to give in to requests for pain-killing injections.

He said: ‘A large number of women want to avoid pain, but more should be prepared to withstand it. Pain in labour is a purposeful, useful thing which has a number of benefits, such as preparing a mother for the responsibility of nurturing a newborn baby.’

As an ex midwife I have been waiting for this report and it’s every bit as awful as I expected.

Women are not listened to.

Midwives are trained (or were) with the quaint notion of birth being normal, that’s okay as around 70% of births are “normal” by which I mean a vaginal delivery with no assistance needed. . However the system fails to note that this is more likely if

The woman has built trust in her caregivers
If the midwife is known to the mother
The midwife has provided a good 50% of the antenatal care and knows the history well.

The reality is a underfunded and understaffed system with not enough midwives and the focus on keeping costs down.

Most women will not have met the midwife who assists with their birth. Most women will have had little to no support during pregnancy from a midwife.
The NCT may be hated but at least they try to plug the gap of antenatal education.

Some midwives shouldn’t be allowed within 100ft of a labouring woman.
Nor should some doctors it has to be said too.

The time of lovely normal births has sadly gone, the system is too broken and women now need to have much more say over how their babies are born.

I wrote “no forceps” on my birth plan and told the consultant that I’d rather have a CS than be butchered . In the end DS was a failed induction so was born by CS anyway.

I left midwifery behind as I could no longer be part of a system that treated women so appallingly.

It's such a horrible idea that forceps deliveries are simply cheaper than a c section. But is that accurate?
I'd guess many women would be happier with a forceps delivery done well, rather than the major surgery of a c section.

Oh it's all so terrible. And deeply wrong that women historically have not spoken up about the trauma of childbirth. That baby loss is often treated as bad luck. If we speak up and keep speaking up and don't stop speaking up then things will have to change.

More funding and training. More education, research. Moving beyond the polarising of natural vs medical. Merging expert MW knowledge with expert obstetric knowledge.

Get the toxic staff out. Or/and increase training in psychology of childbirth - make it mandatory.

Force NHS maternity to progress out of a blame work culture into whatever it takes to stop damaging mothers and killing babies.

Women avoid these threads because nobody wants to think of the harrowing reality of child loss- but it is very real and not reading about it won't make it go away.

@peterpomegranate it is sadly still not standard although some midwives will let you know about the private test that is available. I believe one of the mothers in this report has a separate campaign pushing for testing to be introduced as standard. I asked our neonatologist why this was the case and he said that apparently the UK rates of GBS sepsis are not different to countries where they do test. But try telling that to a mum who has or nearly has lost their baby to GBS sepsis or meningitis. He also told me that NICE guidelines dont even recommend preventive antiobiotics for future labours anymore - just increased monitoring post birth.

The hospital I gave birth at was full of similar horrific nonsense. I was told that it didn't have the staff to do a C-Section so I had to give birth "normally". I ended up with life-changing injuries from a forceps delivery.