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!

Entirely possible.

There was a widely reported case less than 5 years ago of a Deaf woman in Dundee, she’d been in hospital more than a week, the staff refused to provide the BSL interpreter she’d repeatedly begged for.

Upshot was, she was wheeled into surgery and her (I think) appendix removed without her knowing what was going on or anyone seeking her consent.

No, mothers don't always "instinctively" know what to do, or they don't know why something isn't working. A previous poster even wrote about her experiences.

Even when it does all work women often have problems with breastfeeding. If they didn't it wouldn't ever be a topic on here would it?

It's clearly being written as a "scrounging refugee" story and that's horrible.

On the DM link somebody has made the following comment:

Sri Lankan refugee???? I've just been on holiday there are it is a very nice place. How can someone be a refugee from there? This country is so soft it's unbelievable.

Amazed that they haven't heard about the civil war and genocide of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Unbelievable.

Saddened for the poor lady and her family :(

This doesn't surprise me at all. Not too long later this happened in a different hospital in that trust.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12850644
The trust had a massive problem back then especially on the maternity side.

@TheJoyOfSox they were REFUGEES, new to a country where they don't speak the langauge. What resources do you think they had to bring an interpreter?!

The UK is a multicultural country. The NHS does have a responsibility to provide interpreters.

As for everyone else saying that she should have known to feed her baby - stop speculating on something you don't understand. You don't know that she wasn't struggling to produce her own milk. You don't know whether her baby could latch on properly. You don't know whether she had infections or any other number of things. SHE knew something was wrong, and she tried to get help for her baby, and she was failed.

I can totally believe this. My DS had feeding problems and I found it very hard to get help and I am a native speaker with a PhD! I got shouted at for not trying hard enough when I was too weak from blood loss to hold a fork without my hands shaking, let alone hold a baby for the duration of a feed or express milk by hand. I even got told off for not drinking while trying to explain that I was very thirsty and wanted a drink but that my water jug had been empty for hours and I had no idea where to get water. Luckily for us, the next shift did better and eventually things worked out OK. Another friend who is also a native speaker had a very similar experience.

I can totally see how it happened.

From the way I've read it it sounds more likely that she tried to feed but milk hadn't come in or similar not that she didn't know the baby needed feeding. She obviously tried to raise it with staff but was told it was normal for babies to cry.

Personally I had DD at 1 hour into the 37th week, if she'd born the hour before she would of been classed as premature. It was my first baby, I wasn't due to see my midwife & do a birthing plan until the following week & my waters broke on my way home from working a full time week as my maternity leave wasn't due to start for another 3 weeks. We were sent home after 4 hours.... honestly looking back in hindsight it was ridiculous. Clearly remember me & DH walking in, sitting on the sofa then looking at each other & saying 'what the hell do we do now?'

There is such a rush to get people back out after giving birth!

It is incredibly difficult to get a 'payout' for birth injury. It can take decades.
The Fail are being true to form and not reporting the facts.
They are only reporting this because the family are not English.
Lots of families have to go to law to get the compensation they need to provide care for their disabled children and the Fail doesn't report them.

Families are not permitted to 'profit' from these payouts. They are not permitted to be in a better financial position than they would be if their child was not harmed. i.e. the money is for housing, adaptations, therapy and care. Its not a reward.

The hospital I was in gave Really Excellent Breastfeeding support. Even there, I remember that the woman in the bed next to me repeatedly raised concerns about breastfeeding which were being ignored as some sort of cultural misunderstanding about what to expect - after some change in shift I saw the All-Hands-To-The-Pumps response when a new midwife said to her, ‘oh I see what you mean’.

Where was the father?

I do think that staff should have noticed she hadn't fed her baby, but did she have no visitors?

When I had DD I was discharged at 10pm after 12 hours with a sleeping baby I had fed 3 times (one observed) and told to wake her to feed in 6 hours if she was still asleep. (And then the next day the community midwife went batshit that they hadn't told me at least every 4 for daytime)

Surely someone should have watched her feed, checked latch, etc, and shown her a clock to indicate how often she should do that?

Also how do they know you're producing colostrum? Do they get you to hand express to check before you go or it it a 'baby seems happy on boob, must be working' thing? (I was pretty out of it and I can't remember)

I do remember thinking pre-DD that because your 'milk doesn't come in' until day 4/5 that babies must be able to survive a while with nothing and that if it didn't work you wouldn't need to bottle feed until like day 3. Now I think about it that makes no sense! Even adults can't survive that long without a drink!

I was discharged after a c section too early and had still not managed to breastfeed properly. When the midwife came the next morning DD still hadn't fed and we were taken back into hospital where she was tube fed for a week.
It may seem ridiculous that a mum is unable to feed their baby, but it can be so overwhelming if it isn't going well and if you don't have support in place things can snowball very quickly.
I feel for this poor lady, she was completely let down. Her poor son.

I had no idea my son wasn't feeding effectively. Loads of colostrum coming out , baby on the breast all the time. Five days later , baby in hospital with severe jaundice due to dehydration. And I speak perfect English. In addition, I once visited a client in hospital who was highly vulnerable and had just given birth. I was concerned she wasn't feeding baby and a midwife told me not to worry as babies don't need feeding for 3 days as they have brown fat to live off !!!! Its no wonder really.

the staff refused to provide the BSL interpreter she’d repeatedly begged for
That is illegal.

I knew a Deaf woman who was sterilised without her informed consent.
I am not talking about decades ago either.

Its a terrible thing to happen but its not the NHS fault. We have to stop handing out millions of pounds in 'compensation', the NHS is not a private company.

That's such a sad story, the poor baby. I assume she thought her milk would come in eventually, you get told a lot during pregnancy that this may take time.

I didn't produce milk with either of my pregnancies (neither did my mother or grandmother). When I had my older son I didn't produce any milk at all, not even when they tried to show me how to hand express. I was told he was fine, he was screaming hysterically because he was newborn and some babies cry a lot and to just keep right on with breastfeeding because he is getting something even though there was no milk and he wasn't latching on. In my notes they put that he was 'hungry and distressed' but told me he was fine, that there was no issues and I should continue breastfeeding. There was minimal support. At one point they took him away from me after I had a seizure (I am epileptic) and he was asleep when I next saw him, I suspect he had a bottle feed but they didn't tell me. They continue to encourage me to breastfeed despite absolutely no milk being produced till I insisted on him having a bottle. They absolutely would have let me take him home even though he wasn't breastfeeding and let me think it was fine to carry on.

With my second son I spoke to the midwife beforehand and told all women can breastfeed and I didn't get enough support the first time round. Predictably my milk didn't come in again. I was told there was no one available to help try and get him to latch on, that I was not allowed to access a breast pump and would no be able to speak to a lactation consultant. I said I would then be bottle feeding and the midwife rolled her eyes and said the kitchen was down the hall. When I read my note she had put that I had no interest or commitment to breastfeeding despite support offered.

My post natal care was appalling both times and my children were only fed because I insisted on bottle feeding. My milk never came in and they absolutely would have let me go home without being able to feed the baby. I think most women would work out to bottle feed on their own but this woman was particularly vulnerable and she should have had more support.

There’s some quite large assumptions here. It doesn’t say anywhere which feeding method they were using. So either she didn’t understand how to bottle feed to correct timings or she wasn’t producing colostrum in which case of course it’s negligence as this should have been checked. It’s true that Babies don’t need ‘milk’ until day 3 or 4. You can see how easily things could have be lost in translation. How very sad.

Just for the 'why should we' people... I've been admitted to hospital in three other countries, two rich, one poor. All managed to communicate with me effectively. Because people shouldn't be arseholes to sick, scared foreigners. Thank goodness the people who treated me knew that.

That poor family- I think the reporting is unfair when it mentions that mum "didn't know she had to feed the baby" - surely short of any learning disabilities, she most certainly knew that a baby needs to be fed.

Reading between the lines it seems that staff assumed that due to her background she'd be a confident breastfeeder without actually taking time to check.

Gosh, what a sad story :(

I speak fluent English, had bf support in hospital and was a fully paid up member of the b/f support boards on MN and my firstborn lost TWENTY per cent of their birth weight in 7 days, even though I was (trying, at least) breastfeeding around the clock.

We were admitted straight to hospital when the m/w weighed her at a week old.

I can WELL see how this situation could occur, given how I had every support possible and was trying (and failing) so hard to sustain my baby.

So sad! Weirdly enough at work we once failed to find a Tamil interpreter - in a very multicultural, major UK city. It sounds like in this case they didn't even try

Poor family. Poor child. The case is horrendous.
I gave birth in a hospital that had awards for breastfeeding support. Yet I had to ask and ask for someone to show me how to check DS was latched on properly. However, when the shift changed, they did keep checking in on me to see if he was feeding yet. The difference between shifts was marked so I can see how a mum could have problems and the staff be both unaware and unsupportive.

This is an appalling story. That poor family. I can’t begin to imagine how the mother must have felt at the time. Sadly midwives are so stretched and are not always good as supporting postpartum women that I am only surprised that this is not a more regular occurance.

Unfortunately its not an uncommon thing for children to be cognitively impaired due to poor nutrition. Initially it can be caused by hypoglycaemia but it can happen at weaning too. It's happening more so now with BLW and babies not getting adequate nutrition and ending up iron deficient (which causes poor brain development). Beige food = anaemic kids = cognitive deficiencies.

I don't find any part of the story unlikely.

In my case I was completely unsuccessful in breast feeding after a c section. My DS was screaming from hunger, I repeatedly asked for help from the midwives and was told "how do you know he's not feeding?" and told to keep trying and not worry about the crying as "his reserves will carry him through". Literally no support available, and if I hadn't cracked and bottle fed him we could absolutely be in the same position as this family.

Postnatal care and especially feeding support need to be much, much better.