To sue the NHS over my birthing experience

[boomitscountginula]

Now before I get flamed to death. I do appreciate my birth story isn't as bad as some but, I now refuse to have another baby unless I can get assurances that this won't happen again, and the only way I can do so is to go private, I think.? It was traumatic to me.

I had a quite easy birth, in terms of how long it took "officially" but I wasn't listened to and have a couple of long lasting injuries I think could of been prevented if they believed I was in labour to begin with.

My birth story: I woke up the day after my due day and had lost my plug over night. Went for a stretch and sweep at lunch, (planned as it was my first) with my midwife said I was 3cm already.

Fabulous, no pain at the minute, now 3cm easy birth.. so I thought.

Went home had a nap, woke up with contractions near tea time. By 9pm they where regularly 6 minutes apart so rang the maternity ward, had a phone assessment and went in.

Got into maternity triage, in absolute agony, had a physical exam and the triage said:

"Your only 3 cm, you need to come home and come back."

I said well as you can see, I am contacting every 6 minutes and less now, the pain is overwhelming and I feel like I need to push.

She tutted and said in all her experience she had never been wrong and I had hours to go, so needed to go home.

I was in bits at this news and crumbled. I never wanted an epidural and chose pethidine (sic) and gas and air. So agreed I would go home but I needed some kind of pain killer, that I could have with my chosen birth plan. I really put my foot down and said I will go home but only if I can get a pain killer stronger that the 2 paracetamol I had taken already.

She said she would find a doctor, but never came back.

Meanwhile I then go into the advanced stages of Labour. Bare in mind I had two paracetamol and my waters haven't broken. It's like trying to birth a gym ball.

I am literally screaming in pain in a side room in maternity triage, pushing and effectively giving birth myself. My partner and my mum (both birth partners) took it in turns to find anyone. But no one came for 45 minutes.

After 45 minutes a junior midwife came in and said "oh my god your in labour".

Me and her literally ran to the deliver ward, where I was given gas and air.

I took a massive gulp of it, and was told off, because I should only take it when I am in pain and contracting..... never mind the two hours I have just been in hospital alone labouring, without a monitor on my baby or any pain relief.

I am still not hooked up to monitor, the only medical intervention is gas and air right now. My waters still haven't broken, 4 minutes later I was given the pethidine. 2 minutes after that I crown, baby in sack. Midwife broke the waters and my son was born. My official record shows that I was in labour for 9 minutes.

I had pain relief 4 minutes into my 9 minute birth and at no point was I on any kind of contraction monitoring machine. Nothing monitoring baby's heartbeat etc etc. I might as well have birthed in the woods.

I also split my right labia in two during the birth. The midwife didn't want to stitch it because it wasn't that bad.. yet I couldn't pee, unless in the bath for 3 weeks, and now that side is an inch longer than the other. Causing me, well you can imagine.

Start to finish I was treated like dirt, I was left labouring in a room alone, I was belittled and injured without proper treatment. And now I am afraid to be pregnant again.

I love the NHS, but they have let me down, massively. I am permanently injured (labia) and mentally scarred. But hate the idea of sueing the NHS on a theoretical level...

Actually fear of litigation informs NHS policy and the actions of individual medical professionals.

Perhaps if enough women sued when they are left permanently injured or traumatised in perfectly avoidable situations, in future other women would receive better care. It is so common for women in labour to be treated like dirt in the UK. And it is seems to be so hard for women to get heard.

Yabu to sue

Did your mum or dh not get help whilst you were waiting? Sounds like they weren’t very good advocates for you either

Yes it is all the OP'S family's fault FFS

And oh do read the opening post.

I had a similar birth with DC2. I delivered her myself after 5 minutes of labour. I didn’t find it traumatic.

But DC1s birth. I almost died after 39 hours of labour with no pain relief other than gas and air which they repeatedly took off me, told me I wasn’t in active labour, left me alone for hours on end, I then ended up with failed vetouse, failed rotational forceps and a crash c section under general anaesthetic. I had 47 stitches and tore from vagina to anus as well as having labial injuries. I required several further surgeries because I was left fecally incontinent. And DC1 has his shoulder dislocated and is blind in one eye due to forceps injuries. Physically it took me a year to recover and the PTSD and subsequent PND that had me in a mother and baby psych unit for 3 months still bites me on the ass 13 years later.

So I’m sorry you didn’t get your ideal birth experience but ffs. 6 weeks physical recovery is bog standard for post natal women.

The women’s isnt closing actually anabella and we constantly receive awards :)

I don’t work on delivery like but still.

Btw if the Women’s closes there’s few places women would be able to give birth in Liverpool.

@Pengggwn I absolutely am serious. I see genuine grounds for the OP to complain but to sue is insulting to women like me.

Come and talk to me once you've spent £25,000 on IVF treatment, told the booking-in midwife your entire gynaecological and family history for it to be written down but ignored/not flagged, present yourself to A&E twice with vaginal bleeding in the second trimester, be sent home both times after being scanned (where complications were noted on the scan but dismissed and not followed up. Twice), and then go in to labour and give birth to a son who lives for 3 minutes and dies in your arms, have your milk come in but no baby to feed, close the door to the nursery you've set up, arrange your baby son's funeral, his birth certificate and his death certificate, and after all of that be told to your face "You fell through the cracks of the NHS" and "This was preventable".

Do not put the OP and I in the same category of "inadequate care".

We are 8/9 possibly even ten years into a medical negligence claim after birth injury (it's easy to forget tbh). If the injury is to you, you have three years to file. If the injury is to a child, I believe you have until the child is 18 to file. So our claim for our 14yo with cerebral palsy as a result of birth injury is still ongoing, with little chance of ever ending. We aren't doing it for money - we felt that it was the only way to get answers about what happened, as we felt that at some point, she may well want to know what caused her disability. And we wanted the trust to ensure their regulations about trainee supervision and vbac monitoring were tightened up.
As others have said, you need to be able to prove that the negligence caused the injury, and that the outcome would have been different if x, y or z. In our case, we probably can't prove negligence (vbac2, should have been CFM, but only intermittent monitoring every 45 minutes or so by student midwife who couldn't find heartbeat so was saying 125 every time.) Because there wasn't enough monitoring, and the student didn't know what she was doing, no-one noticed that the babes hr was down to 28bpm until the supervisor put her hands on me to double check i was dilated enough to push. she crashed the team straight away. So, not enough monitoring means no proof of timing for hypoxia, and no timing for the hypoxia means there was no way they knew they should have been EMCS. ergo, brain damage. Without a FHR trace, we can't prove at what time action should have been taken that wasn't. You might think that lack of monitoring is negligence, but it isn't. Negligence is not doing something when you have a clinical indication that something is necessary. In your case, 3cms and 6 mins is not an indication of any action being required. Same with us. As there is no trace showing when my baby stopped getting oxygen, there is no expectation that the staff would have taken any emergency action to correct it. The fact that there should have been monitoring in place but wasn't, is unfortunate, but does not constitute negligence. The lack of monitoring means nothing can be proven, ergo no negligence.
They didn't tell me she was alive for 4 hours.
I went for counselling when she was 5 to deal with the flashbacks. dh went for a vasectomy. dd2 is obv brain damaged. but we are all here.
vbac1 was also a gong show - back to back baby, failed internal rotation, prep for emcs, but managed to deliver with vast amounts of tearing just before surgery. he was fine, but i was in for a week while they repaired my nether regions.
dc1 was elcs for macrosomia (I don't do small babies. a 9lber in scbu for months is something of a challenge). i'm just spectacularly shit at childbirth.

but i do now have a letter from the debrief consultant (who told me I was lucky because the other case he was dealing with was a severed spinal cord from forceps delivery) saying that if I am ever stupid enough to get pregnant again, I am to have another ELCS. no discussion. I'm not having any more. obviously.

Well, that's great, isn't it? What about the OP's distress and torn fanny?

The distress is unacceptable, 'torn fannies' are a common, and considered a minor, birth injury.
I still don't think these are grounds to sue the NHS. Sueing is for lack of earnings or life changing injury.

She could have her labia seen to on the NHS, and probably have counselling on the NHS but if they are sued for things like this then there is simply less money available for such things.

You're not being unreasonable to feel scared apprehensive and angry.
However on the subject of suing. I don't think you'd have a leg to stand on if all this happened 4 Years ago.
The NHSs argument is going to be why has this only 'became"a problem Now. Plus how true it is I'm not 100% sure, but I heard you can only sue up until a year after.

Rather than spending money during them, can you afford to give birth privately, hire a midwife or Duala? Or sue the government over the cuts leading to such poor staff ratios? (The fact it was so hard to find anyone, suggests that they were with other women who officially were further along in the birthing process).
Or look for midwife birthing centres or discover if you qualify for a consultant birthing area?
I would also talk to PALS at the hospital
(My birth was hideous, invoking a hemorrhage, gas and air just made me feel queasy and still have a bruised spine from epidural. But I was under consultant care and never felt abandoned as it was one midwife per room).

It is shocking what happened to you OP

It is a shame you have not complained at the time, I imagine it makes suing harder/impossible...

Can you go private?

You say you love the NHS, to a foreigner this is so hard to understand. The NHS is badly run and has lots of problems, what is there to love??

Really interested in the back to back comments. DD was back to back and I had a lot of intervention because I was progressing so slowly (50- yes 50- hours to get to 7cm ) weird thing is they knew she was B2B which was easily triaged over the phone by listening to a contraction and asking where I felt the pain!

Honestly, i wouldn’t bother as the most you will get is a very detailed letter saying they are sorry you FEEL that way - never actually admitting to anything.

My birth experience was awful, I won’t go into lengthy details but the hospital sent me home as I wasn’t in “established labour” and the midwifes I saw said as it was my first, it would be at least 24 hours before anything happened and to go home and sleep. I was contracting nearly every minute and in horrendous pain and they wouldn’t let me stay.

Anyway six hours after I got home, our baby was born on the bathroom floor. I had no pain relief, no midwifes - nothing. It was me and my DP alone.

If anything had gone wrong during the birth, our DD might not be here today.

I complained to our hospital and got back a five page letter detailing how they think what they did was acceptable and explaining why they did what they did. They basically said I was an unusual case and they can’t be expected to know that I would give birth so fast. They wouldn’t admit to any wrong doing.

It has completely put me off ever having another as the experience was so horrendous.

Oh is the Women's not closing now, dripping.
I heard they were going to put a maternity unit into the New Royal Hospital, when its finally completed.

Your birth sounds very very similar to mine. Yes demand answers. Yes go private if you can afford to, but i would dont think its grounds to sue at all sorry.

Bringing a medical negligence claim is a length, expensive process and time limited. I think it may be helpful to the OP to approach a specialised legal firm and have this properly explained to her. She can then perhaps consider how she would like to move forward with a repair and possibly requesting an elective CS with a future pregnancy.

You have a common minor injury, no lasting damage to your child, and it sounds like despite the confusion the hospital probably didn’t break the law or their duty of care. So even if you did sue it probably wouldn’t go anywhere. Write a complaint letter first. Also, suggest if you want to go private then start saving.

I had a traumatic birth ended up having a meeting with the manager if the midwives a few weeks after birth nothing came of it u could try but might be better off getting counselling..i am def not having anymore because of this

I haven't read every single post but this thread is so sad, I'm actually in tears reading some of these stories. high quality maternity care is the least we should expect and clearly it's falling way below this. It's so sad to hear that substandard and negligent care is passed off as normal and everyone then gets into a fight about who had it worse. Something needs to be done about this, it's unacceptable that anyone is dismissed, denied drugs and not believed when they are in labour, if men gave birth it would be completely different.

The NHS has comprehensive insurance against claims if you do sue.

Your birth experience sounds like my first one OP. I also wasn't listened to by midwives when I said I was in established labour and was offered 2 paracetamol and a suggestion to go home. I wasn't even examined, the midwife just decided I wasn't in established labour from timing the duration of a contraction. My baby was born less then 2 hours later and most of that time had been spent arguing with the midwife to take me to the delivery suite. By the time we got to delivery I was too late for any pain relief except a few gulps of gas and air. It was pretty horrendous.
However, me and baby were both healthy despite a few deep grazes I suffered and some minor pelvic floor damage, probably related to the speed of delivery. But the reality is that the grazes and pelvic floor damage would likely have happened regardless of how good the care was, that's just a natural consequence of me having given birth vaginally and the delivery being quick.

I have since had 3 more babies, all delivered by the NHS and all much better experiences than the first. Having had a quick delivery previously means the midwives listen to me when I tell them I am in established labour. With my last baby I only managed to get to delivery with minutes to spare before giving birth (because my labour was very quick, not because of any dismissive attitudes by midwives). The midwives were amazing and listened to me and responded appropriately.
I don't know what foetal monitoring you were expecting whilst in labour because not much monitoring really happens unless there are suspected problems. Certainly with my last two babies I used a midwife birthing centre and don't recall any foetal monitoring at all.

You are not wrong for feeling that you weren't listened to properly and that the midwives were dismissive but I can't see anything in your posts which constitutes a claim. The worst thing is the damage to your labia but that sounds like a natural consequence of giving birth vaginally rather than medical negligence. Being monitored more closely would not have slowed down the pace at which your baby was born and therefore would not have reduced the likelihood of the tear occurring.

You need to get your buts sorted out first. This will help how you feel hopefully. Your experience doesn't sound great.

I have to say it isn't clear what you would be sueing over though.