to think this story cannot be true? Non English speaking mother did not know how to feed her baby causing brain damage, as the NHS did not provide a translator.

[WannaBeWonderWoman]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5612889/Sri-Lankan-refugee-couple-set-multi-million-pound-NHS-payout.html

and if it is there must be something missing?

If there's not, this country has gone mad!

I would definitely pay more for our NHS - as long as it definitely went to the NHS and not MPs expenses or something

@MismatchedStripySocks went to tag you and it says you're the OP, that's a bit odd.

Your comment comes off as complete goady fuckery too.

Also read the replies to your own thread, thanks.

mogle

Are they socking do you think

Reported to see what MNHQ think

I think the story is very believable

The NHS is not fit for purpose anymore...its such a shame and a lot of the staff are trying to move heaven and earth to make it work

Another here who read all the books and was very keen to breastfeed

Ds1 unfortunately hadnt read the books by osmosis and was another child contentedly sucking and drifting back off to sleep. He didnt cry til he was nearly 2.5 weeks old (so no crying baby here) and didnt feed from my breast til he was 3.5 weeks old

Oh yeah

And the first line of the daily mail article is particularly shitty and sets the tone for some of the posts on here

There is some sort of glitch with showing the wrong OP happened on the thread about Justine Roberts and the Times yesterday too and MNHQ commented on it.

MismatchedStripySocks you need to read CinderellaRockefeller 's post on page 5. She gives the full account of what happened.
I really wouldn't believe the daily mail's spin on it. They miss the real story, which is the shocking underfunding of maternity services and instead turn it into a 'let's blame all those refugees for our problems'.

The amount of women who have replied saying it could have easily happened to them is really worrying.

isadoradancing123 the woman is from Sri Lanka. TheJoyOfSox, the NICE guidelines on care of women from different ethnic backgrounds advises that family members should not be used for translation. This advice is completely appropriate as the use of family members can lead to safeguarding issues being missed or covered up.
If the woman was discharged without the right support and again visited at home and the baby's ill health went unrecognised then this responsibility falls on the midwifery team. The recommended advice is to feed a baby 8 times in 24 hours, lots of skin to skin and before discharge at least one feed should be observed. If this was not done then the ruling is utterly reasonable. This baby's brain injury was completely preventable and no blame should be placed on this mother. Midwives have a duty of care and that must be adhered to at all times.

I was discharged from hospital with newborn early (36 week) twins and my milk hadn’t come in. I spent the entire first night tag teaming them, they were latching and feeding fine but it just wasn’t enough. The visiting midwife in the morning put my mind at rest that they were getting nutrition but she was furious they discharged me. It’s one reason I always tell pregnant friends to have at least one formula bottle in case they need it - in mine, the MW had to show me how to sterilise the bottles and I had to waddle to the nearest corner shop for formula. They had 2oz each and slept for 6 hours.

I can well imagine this happening but also wonder if the young woman doesn’t have special needs as well, surely everyone knows you need to feed babies? Did she get literally no support during her entire pregnancy?

I get this story, and my experience has been similar to other mums on this thread. DS was born by c section after 48 hours labour, we were both exhausted. He would feed just for a couple of minutes then fall asleep and stay asleep for ages. I had to take his clothes off, tickle him, gently blow on his face to keep him awake during feeds, and I managed to do this because I had to stay in hospital and I could discuss feeding with the MWs, who would encourage me and support me. If I'd have been discharged sooner, without support at home, I might have made the wrokg decision and not fed DS properly.

She tried to ask for help but was ignored and told babies cry. She was also discharged early.
I was ignored when i informed the midwives that my cathetar wasnt draining properly. I was drinking lots but hardly anything was coming out. Now i have bladder damage.
You hear it all the time parents being ignored when they express concerns.

That poor Mum and baby. I'm sorry to say but I'm not surprised that this kind of thing happens - I'm a native English speaker with a high level of education but I had midwives ignoring my concerns about my baby not producing wet nappies. I gave birth in a 'Baby Friendly Initiative' hospital which promotes exclusive breastfeeding heavily. I had planned to breastfeed but my milk was delayed coming in by weeks.
My daughter suffered a large weight loss and became seriously ill with dehydration and had to be readmitted to hospital to be tube fed formula. This could have been afforded by a small amount of formula in her first few days but a load of inexperienced agenda-driven midwives refused to listen to me.

Avoided not afforded!

I had one of my DC's in this hospital and have suffered with long term health issues ever since. Every time I queried it I was ignored. The midwives were in the main, rude & abrupt. When I was finally discharged I had PTSD and traumatised by the post natal care. People said I should have sued for damages but I would never take money out of the NHS. I was just grateful that my baby was ok. It is a terrible maternity ward with a negative culture within in.

I can absolutely believe this case, having "enjoyed" a comparable experience on a maternity ward myself (and still, in many ways, bear the mental scars 9 years on).

Also: is is wrong that whenever I see a nasty cruel post on this thread, I often recognise the poster and think "oh yes, totally in character"?

Diana - she was feeding the baby (or trying to) but for whatever reason he wasn't taking anything. She asked for help and was just told babies cry and ignored.

My daughter was born only 3.5 weeks prematurely and was about 5 pounds. Luckily I had had an emergency c section and was still in hospital on the second day as she was still asleep after 4 hours or something when a nurse came in to check on us and was quite shocked I was letting her sleep and said I needed to wake her up every two hours to feed her. The nurse said my daughter was staying a sleep because she was too tired to cry and wake up. I was following the guidelines I’d been given on a course before I gave birth ie demand feeding and letting a sleeping baby sleep. No-one had told me this didn’t apply to a baby born a few weeks early - and no-one in the hospital had told me I needed to feed my daughter every two hours. In that 24hr period my daughter lost more than 10 percent of her body weight and was 4 pounds something. And it wasn’t like my daughter was crying - due to the emergency C my breast milk had not yet come in so I was bottle feeding my daughter.
What has happened to this family is a terribly sad situation - I know a few babies who have struggled to breast feed in the first few days - I would not have realised myself the unfort consequences of a baby not feeding for 15hrs.

I do believe this, I speak English perfectly well (native), am an intelligent women and was in my late 20s when I had my ds.
The first night my son was born I kept asking for assistance to feed him (couldn't move, in bed with catheter). Was left all night alone despite buzzing, HCA's kept saying someone would come soon. No one did.
Second night he still hadnt latched successfully (sore face due to forceps) he was screaming for hours, I kept buzzing and was in tears by this point and begged for formula as he still hasn't peed and was over 24 hours old.

I didn’t know how much and often a baby needed to feed when I had DD1. It wasn’t covered on my course save for “baby will let you know when he’s hungry” and the closest I’d been to a baby previously was the picture on the pampers box.

Compounding that was the way DD appeared to be sucking when BF (but wasn’t getting anywhere).

And no one checked on us for 12 hours. Total nightmare.

When I had my DC, we were told in ante-natal classes that a BF baby would be changed and weighed before a feed, then weighed immediately after in the same nappy, to dtermine how much baby was taking in with its feed. Also, nappy contents were observed frequently.

True, I don’t quite see why ratepayers should foot the bill for suchlessons, any more than the Government in Madrid should be expected to teach me Spanish. Clearly, however, any investment in integration must be wiser than discouraging Ghanaians from learning English by printing all documents in Twi.
But let me end with the heart-rending case, reported last weekend, of the Sri Lankan mother whose inability to speak English meant she was unable to understand midwives’ advice on how to feed her baby, who was born in an NHS hospital a year after she arrived in London as a refugee. As a result, Sinthiya Rajatheepan’s son, now eight, was left brain-damaged.
Now fast forward to a week ago today, when the High Court ruled that he should receive compensation from the NHS, expected to run into millions of pounds.
This was because the midwives failed to employ an interpreter to explain the importance of proper feeding techniques to Sinthiya, who was 21 when her boy was born.
God knows, my heart goes out to this family, and I fully accept our humane public duty to help with the boy’s upbringing. But millions of pounds’ compensation? By what perversion of sanity can the NHS be held to blame for this poor woman’s failure to understand English, in England?

The above is what Tom Utley of the Mail had to say

Tom Utley is a vile human. It takes my breath away that the Mail can publish such an obvious perversion of the truth in order to suit their agenda.

MrsFumble, it’s quite upset me. He’s so devious he dressed it all up around a story concerning his kids and the languages they speak and the fact he can’t speak Italian so he shouldn't expect Italians to pander to him.

I’d love to reply to him but I’m in the middle of the wilderness right now and I don’t have the internet access I’d need.