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!

What a very sad story - and all so preventable.

I think that new mothers are sent home far too soon after giving birth. A mother who's just had her first baby shouldn't be discharged from hospital until feeding is established.

I was in hospital for 4 days/5 nights after DS was born. My milk didn't come in until day 4. Prior to that, DS was existing on colostrum and water. He lost 16oz, one eighth of his birth weight, in 4 days and became very jaundiced, requiring light therapy. Once proper feeding got going, he was fine and we went home.

I can well believe this. That poor poor woman and baby. Why some of these people go into nursing and midwifery when they have no patience or inclination to help people and basically treat you like an inconvenience I don't know.

She must have been terrified

It Was a good job id had a baby befire and had intended to bottle feed dd2 because of have been fucked otherwise.

Care can be shocking. Too many people with too many different roles" no one talks to eachother and each thinks someome else is responsible for whatever it is you need.

This is precisely the kinda stuff that happens as a result

Poor poor family

I wasnt told anything about breastfeeding with ds1, except when i spoke to a male midwife and mentioned my baby had only fed for 5 minutes. He said "oh his tummy is only the size of a cherry so that will fill him.up for ages". I knew bottle fed babies generally went 4 hours between bottles so assumed that was the same with my breastfed baby. He lost almost 10% of his body weight and my milk didnt come in until day 5. By this point i had researched and he was literally on the boob for the next 4 months, putting on a pound a week in some cases!

Ds2 he latched straight away (quick and "easy" water birth). I was asked if i wanted a "6 hour discharge" once id been stitched up and midwife was surprised that ds2 was feeding. Ds2 is now 3 months old and barely lost an ounce... he's enormous.

But i can totally understand how this might have happened, im sure the mum tried to feed but if baby was sleepy and not latching and mum was knackered after birth it isnt hard to understand how she may well have slept a full night, tried to feed in the morning and have then not been able to rouse baby to feed.

I think regardless of language the lack of infant feeding support in this country is an absolute disgrace!

Thanks for that other link.
That poor family. I hope the so called professionals are no longer employed in the NHS, or elsewhere in health services.

Yep I ended up back on hospital due to dd3 losing lots of weight. My concerns re feeding were ignored by a relief community midwife. She didn't even bother to weigh her. We were rushed back into hospital on day 5 by my regular midwife.
These things happen.

I'm a lawyer. I don't specialise in clinical negligence but sometimes read the cases on it because it's quite interesting.

Judges want justice to be done, and, in the case of severe injuries to children, I do think that they sometimes interpret the facts in such a way as to intentionally get to the outcome that they perceive to be "just".

This woman was a refugee, and is probably pretty poor. The hospital has deep pockets and insurance. What would happen to the child if the court had found there was no negligence on behalf of the court? How on earth would his financial needs for the future have been met? The best outcome for the child was to get a hospital payout to cover his future care, and the judge would have been well aware of this.

I think that in cases like this there's a chance that the decision of the court isn't necessarily a true reflection of whether or not the care from the hospital was substandard.

If you read through the whole judgement, realistically the translation/English issue isn’t really the problem, her husband and his friend who do both speak English tried to get help for her because she knew full well her baby had been crying all day and not feeding... and were totally dismissed, repeatedly...

They were told to take her and the baby home and that newborn babies cry.

My milk didn't come in for a few days due to having a c-section. The hospital midwife showed me how to bf but nothing was coming out. 18 hours after birth I was worried that DS had never been fed so I begged the nurse for a bottle of formula. When the midwife found out she was really annoyed - apparently she thought it was fine for DS to suck on an empty breast until my milk came in. She insisted he only needed "tiny amounts" so the few drops I was producing were sufficient, and said his fat stores were designed to tide him over until I produced milk.

Due to her insistence that DS didn't need top ups I continued to bf. DS lost 1.5lb in less than 3 days and had to be readmitted to hospital. So I can totally believe that the Sri Lankan lady didn't get proper bf support but I greatly doubt that only 15 hours without feeding caused cerebral palsy.

But surely milk doesnt come in for a few days anyway?? Isn’t that normal? It’s colostrum for the first few days?

Based on my own experience as a (fairly) educated, articulate native English speaker when DS was born in 2010, I can absolutely understand what went wrong.

As previous posters have said, this doesn't really seem to be about a lack of translator or understanding on the mother's part. This is about her being discharged too early without being observed to see if the baby was feeding correctly, and her and the father's concerns being dismissed.

I am a native speaker of English and work in a profession where communication is a massive part of the job. I had a child by C section who then suckled but I could tell wasn’t actually patching properly. He then went to sleep and stayed asleep a long time. I raised this concern with midwives etc but was told it was normal and went to sleep myself eventually. I woke up to him crying inconsolably. I tried to call for help as I couldn’t move properly due to c section. Another mother alerted nurses for me in the end as all my calls went ignored. They put him on again but nothing calmed him. They crossly said that they would take him and try to feed him. When they woke me again they told me he had become hypoglycaemic and was in SCBU.

Thank God for that other mother. While I’m hugely grateful to the nurses and NHS for the care they gave my hypoglycaemic child, I do think he might not have become so ill if people had listened to me or noticed the amount he was sleeping. He could have died without intervention. So I believe it’s very possible that a non native speaker wasn’t given adequate help. I wasn’t listened to about my son’s feeding problems (probably connnected to the c section) and I was able to speak English. And I think it the judge has ruled that the lack of feeding caused the problems of this child then there is probably compelling evidence. My son was in SCBU within 18 hours of birth due to lack of feeding.

... and fuck the Mail for trying to spin it as otherwise.

Oh for fucks sake

Tragic case but sueing ? Taxpayers money wont compensate for this tragic loss

And we can’t be expected to cover for every single language . Awful but not at all happy at NHS money being spent on
This

Zibbidoo - yes, milk doesn’t come in for a while but colostrum should. In my case and I believe for others with C section often there is no colostrum either. So all this liquid gold stuff they spout is no help. My baby couldn’t latch anyway. It took me over a month of working with a lactation consultant and my husband assisting with every feeding to position the baby to establish breast feeding. The help I got in the hospital was worse than useless.

Taxpayers money wont compensate for this tragic loss

Did you even read it? the child is alive! He will need life long care. Expensive life long care. That is what the money is to pay for. Idiot.

AH ok, thanks scipio. So not even the colostrum came through for you! I get it now.

Taxpayers money wont compensate for this tragic loss

It might go some way to helping the family afford the massive financial burden of caring for a severely disabled child, which would presumably have fallen upon the taxpayer anyway? At least now they will hopefully have the money to select the care they feel most appropriate.

Well then don’t be a fucking idiot.

I had gave birth at age 21 in the U.S. with no support. I bought Dr. Benjamin Spock’s 'Baby and Child Care' book. My son did great. In the U.S. there are no home health visitors and all that, your on your own.

This woman had nine months to prepare. She could have got a hold of a book in her own language. The U.K. has become a nanny state and the NHS is being destroyed.

Some posters on here should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

YOUR experience of life, with visitors and google and a mum and resources is not THE experience of life.

If you can’t see beyond your own experience then you shouldn’t comment on these threads. You’re fucking embarrassing.

The judge didn’t suck this decision out of his thumb for fucks sake.

Read, look, learn. Don’t. Just. Judge.

She did prepare, Charolais. She knew there was something wrong and she repeatedly raised it with those who should have helped her. She was fobbed off. The Daily Racist is trying to imply that it’s all her fault because she couldn’t speak English when in fact many of us on this thread have had similar experiences despite our comparative ease in communication.

You are lucky your birth was straightforward. You’re not more skilful.

Slightly off point but in response to the bsl comments - there is a huge shortage and we often find the translation company requires 2weeks notice which doesn't work for emergencies. We had such an emergency during our cqc inspection and as no bsl approved translator was available we used a lady in our finance office who has a deaf son however she wasn't trained officially to the level required to give medical translation so we were slated by cqc and told it would have been better to have no translator However we would do the same again. It's not ideal but best we can do. Similarly with language translation, we cannot always get the language we require. I've just had an mri leaflet translated for 1 Spanish patient at £124. I really with google translate was more reliable!