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

Heartbreaking.

Thinking of all the women and babies and children and young people and families affected

Going to see what I can do to raise awareness through work.

YY to pp who have said that at the time, the culture was natural birth at all costs. I remember being asked 'But didn't you feel you'd failed?' because I'd had gas & air to help deliver the placenta. I'd given birth to my daughter on the bathroom floor, in an unplanned home birth, and she'd had the cord wrapped so tightly round her neck that she was blue and needed resuscitating by the paramedics.

It has been heartbreaking listening to the testimony of so many women saying 'I knew something was wrong, but no one listened to me'. Childbirth is when we are at our most vulnerable, so for the trust to have what seems to be such a callous attitude is genuinely horrifying. I am in awe of the strength of Rhiannon & Kayleigh for fighting to get this heard, and for all of the other families & NHS staff who came forward to make sure this wasn't ignored.

So awful to read.

The drumbeat of this report is the failure again and again and again to investigate properly when things went wrong, decide what to do about it in the best ways, and then to actually DO any of the action plan. Effort expended mainly to keep investigation local and less exposed.

I would actually like a companion report on Trusts that are good at maternity services. There must be some. Not isolated ideas or schemes but good care, good culture, good clinical governance, over a period of time.

I wonder if some of those Trusts would have relatively poor ratings on postnatal care, which we all know can be awful, and allow partners to stay even if it means less than ideal circumstances for women finding there are men overnight on the ward, because they prioritise having staff on the delivery unit where the lifethreatening stuff happens. There might be tradeoffs. At least this report actually mentions more money.

Rhiannon and Kayleigh - thanks for speaking out and fighting for all pregnant women and their babies 💐

I've said this on some of the other threads but I saw a brilliant (female) consultant with my second pregnancy who was great at offering ELCS and helping me decide whether that was a good choice for me.

I had to speak to the most offensively clueless male doctor (? I assume he had some medical training as he appeared to be employed to give medical advice but if you'd told me it was a practical joke I'd believe you) before I spoke to her - but thought I'd mention the first to show that it can be done!

We go trusting nhs and then

They treat us like we are children and we trust them as we don’t give birth often so we don’t know.
Then they lie to us and cover it up

Thank you to all who exposed this

It's just so tragic and sickening. This is my local trust and it's affected one of my close friends personally, so to see her go through all that she has and then see the findings is just harrowing. It's rocked the local community too for years since the investigation first started. I had maternity care in Shrewsbury back in 2000 and I remember them saying then there were not enough midwives. It's the story in so many other places though, I had terrible substandard care in another trust that left me with PTSD and my baby damaged.

I heard Rhiannon being interviewed on Today this morning. What an extraordinary woman. She has turned her tragedy into an expose of a horrific culture. That Times article is sickening. I look at the photos if those men who presided over the regime and I want them to feel just a scintilla of the psi they put those women through.

My DD had GBS sepsis at birth last year, which affected so many of the babies in this report. She survived with (so far) no long term complications identified due to the brilliant team at our hospital who picked it up early and got her into the NICU in good time. I'm so so angry that others in the UK haven't been able to access the same level of care and i just feel so much for all the women affected in the report. The two mothers who pushed for this are absolutely amazing.

33 hour active labour with my first. No real desire for natural or otherwise labour. Slightly worried about a c section only because my husband had only passed his driving test literally days before but figured we'd manage if it came to it. My basic philosophy was I'd take the drugs if needed and get the baby out however possible.

Drugs never offered and because I didn't ask they assumed I was fine. I wasn't allowed to push for two hours after getting to 10cm due to previous lung issues. Later found out that standard protocol for this is to give an epidural as it's nearly impossible not to push when fully dilated. Consultant at different trust for second baby when I recounted this was horrified and wanted names. I was exhausted before I even got to pushing.

Consultant said I'd need a c section about 4 hours before it actually happened. Once he left the room midwife dismissed what he said and insisted I WOULD be doing it naturally

Baby's heartbeat lost several times. By the time midwife admitted defeat we didn't know if our baby was going f to be alive when they got him out. Thankfully he was but he was incredibly poorly and straight to NICU. Didn't get to see him for 24 hours. Told the second day that he might not make it. Somehow he did.

My second baby was an elective c section. Fuck natural birth at any cost. This philosophy has to stop. It's a wonderful thing but not at the expense of anyones health or survival

There needs to be better dialogue all round, a vaginal birth can be a positive experience and whilst it wasn't jumping bunnies, none of mine were negative (in the bigger picture) experiences.

There was some issues - being told that I couldn't possibly be ready to push because it hadn't been long enough, and they reluctantly agreed to examine me - yes I was fully dilated. With number 2, I was slightly pre-term so was continually monitored and still told that I wasn't in labour. Thankfully the mw on the prenatal ward picked up that I was and so kept a close eye on me. The 'problem' I had and indeed my mom did too was that we labour in our hips so the machine does not pick up contractions - in fact the told my Dad to tell her to stop moaning - my sister was born 30 minutes later (bear in mine this was also a high risk pregnancy following a still birth) The first time I was stitched without any pain relief.

There is a common theme though, not being listened too, I was even told when my waters broke with dc2 that I had simply wet myself - my waters had gone at the onset of labour with dc1, I knew what I was feeling, but no it was simply that I had wet myself. dc1 they tried to send me home because they were so certain I wasn't in labour.

I watched the Panorama programme and in many of the stories there was nuggets of my experiences, I don't know why I was listened to and they weren't, being told it wasn't their waters that had broken, or that they couldn't possibly be in labour.

I shouldn't just be one of the lucky ones who had good experiences and good outcomes,* this should be for everyone. For some this will be a CS for others a VB on a few puffs of gas and air.

*Bar my earlier recounted experience, the experience and calmness of that MW potentially prevented a different outcome.

Horrific, and utterly heartbreaking.

I'm another who's not surprised though based on personal experience.

I worked in the NHS for 35 years. I never even contemplated giving birth in an NHS maternity unit. Nor did I ever contemplate a vaginal birth. So much brainwashing.

Sad that “DH going on a stag do” is trending on this site ATM yet this thread isn’t. SMH.

It doesn't surprise me one bit. NHS maternity care in some places is worse than most developing nations. They fiddle the data to make it look ok but it's reallllly not. If we couldn't have afforded private I wouldn't have had any more children. I have life changing injuries. And no one cares. Most women don't even bother to complain because there's so little point. The two women who instigated this should be made heros.

These bosses went on to do things like counter-fraud, run “leadership and safety in health” courses(!), and one of them on £100K+ even lied about his qualifications. What happened to him? Well, nothing, so it seems.

Another one resigned for a day in order to make £500K. While claiming a pension.

Absolutely sickening.

Bosses at disgraced Shrewsbury NHS trust went on to lucrative health jobs.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/47251ed0-affc-11ec-8570-b43daaf58ea1?shareToken=36ab8b3b9a56ebc916a43d34259ef2fe

’natural’ often means mediaeval levels of pain and risk to life.

This. I feel so angry with myself that I agreed to go down the natural birth route and then caused my baby to suffer severe distress (failed forceps delivery followed by emergency c-section) as a result. If I’d had an ELCS it could all have been avoided. I then had PND because I felt I’d failed my baby already and he’d only just been born.

There was also an extended feature in the Sunday Times on Sunday which included family testimony which was so devastating I’ve had to bookmark it so I can finish it in a second sitting. It was unbearably sad and angering. 💐 for every woman, baby, father and family affected.

This is just horrific. Honestly, if I could have my time again I would have an elective c-section every time (spoken as someone who was persuaded to go down the natural birth route then ended up with an emergency c-section because my baby was in so much distress).

I don’t think so. We are treated like children when we go to have our babies

My first was resuscitated 3 times. So long in labour

I didn’t know. It was my first baby.

You trust the staff.

I dintd after my first

The women of mumsnet have been posting about this for some time - I've had times I just want to shout about it. I mean all we can hope is that lessons might actually be learned but it's just so sad and so unfair.

Let’s ask men if they could be pregnant.

Let’s not bother about women and their babies