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!

Is postnatal care the kind of thing @mnhq would campaign on? It must affect so many new mums.

Only skim read the thread but can well believe this happened.

Like a few PPs, I had a similar experience (at another London hospital). Ten years ago I was discharged less than 12 hours after giving birth - a long and traumatic delivery that had involved being transferred in from a nearby birthing centre. I’d haemorrhaged but, worse, I couldn’t persuade my newborn to feed. In my notes, in the breast/bottle feeding column, it simply said “Baby not interested”.

I can’t believe that now. However, I went home, took my baby to bed, and gave him skin-to-skin until he fed. But if I hadn’t known to do that? Or if it hadn’t worked? What then?

stopfuckingshoutingatme
You have no idea what you are talking about.
You don't get a payout for a brain damaged child easily.
Luckily the judge will be going on actual medical evidence (grudgingly given) rather than being so fuckwitted he believes the Daily Fail's account.

@Mamaryllis
I am sorry you are having to read so much bloody nonsense on this thread. I just want to wish you all the best for your ongoing fight to get what your DC needs.
Its a disgrace you have been fighting this long.

I believe this. Ds was born at 37+4, cs after failed induction due to preeclampsia. He had mild jaundice and was sleepy, when put to the breast he took a few gulps then fell asleep. I got little help other than keep trying he'll get the hang of it
Perhaps fortunately for both of us, they signed ds fit to discharge but I wasn't for various reasons so they kept us in.
After a couple of days of this the jaundice worsened. I was shouted at by a paedatrician for not feeding enough (although she gave me no help as to how to feed him more) and threatened that she would take my baby away and put him on a drip ( that's exactly how she said it). It was only when I threw a massive strop at the midwives after that and asked for formula that they gave me a breastpump and some help and things improved, although he never managed to breastfeed we and mix fed for 8 weeks then switched to formula.
Had we been discharged things could have gone similarly with us.
I also have a friend whose baby was also slightly early and sleepy and jaundiced. He had not been getting enough milk and when the midwife came round and examined him he had a fit and stopped breathing. Fortunately the breathing was restarted quickly, he was rushed to hospital and is fine now. But I don't think these experiences are unusual or confined to non English speakers.

First-time mother, CS, concerns that baby not feeding but still discharged early with no efforts made to properly explain to the mother the high likelihood of hypoglycemia if breastfeeding not established. They should have kept the baby on the ward to be observed and have their BMs monitored, not send home with community midwife follow up.

With the current obsession with 'breast is best' it is actually not uncommon for babes to become hypoglycemic whilst Mum is trying for hours to get her milk to flow.

Where the hell was her English fluent speaking huband in all of this????

At the nurse’s station trying to persuade the staff to keep her in overnight on the 18th?! If this had been done, all of this tragedy might never have happened.

Honestly, some of the posts on this thread. Heartless!

I would also say that the community midwives are so overstretched in my area, they only do one home visit and you have to go and see them for further visits. So, only a few days after a c section I had to drag myself out of the house in serious pain. Luckily, I had support, but just another way people could slip through the net.

If a newborn on the postnatal ward is inconsolable even after being breastfed, a bottle of formula/bank breastmilk should be tried.

Syringe and cup feeding should be the first approaches. If a baby isn't latching or there are concerns he isn't transfering milk, midwives/breastfeeding support should show the mother how to hand express and syringe feed. If mother is not able to get sufficient colostrum into baby this way, formula can be cupfed.

Milk doesn't "'come in" until at least day 3 in most cases and this isn't a concern as long as the baby is latching and transferring colostrum while at the breast. Colostrum is always in small amounts and it's a bit of a knack to make it come out with hand expressing, but it is there.

Fwiw I received good support in this way with a sleepy baby who wouldn't feed properly at Kings in 2014 and we breastfed successfully. This is what all women should receive on postnatal wards.

Not just heartless bakedbeans but fucking stupid to boot. It's like some of you are trying to have a competition to be as thick as charolais. People need to RTFJ- Read The Fucking Judgement.

Can I ask at what point people forget that google translate also exists?

Google translate isn’t very accurate though, it’s certainly wrong when it comes to Polish

I'm not going into too much detail with my experiences because it's too traumatic and I simply can't expend the emotional energy.

But I will put this out there.... I had Ds1 at 1 in the morning. on the Saturday Then I had to have my placenta manually removed and had a PPH. I ultimately had a blood transfusion the following Monday. I tried my little heart out to breastfeed, and could not. On the Monday early hours of the morning I finally had a fucking cleaner come to me with a little UHT pack of aptamil and whisper 'don't tell anyone'.

This was 2009 in a hospital in the south of England.

and my milk never ever came in. I thank God for that cleaner every day.

Poor woman, and poor baby. Of course they should be compensated!

She was trying to feed her baby, she knew something was wrong and she and her husband both asked and asked for help and got nothing but negligent care.

I rarely babysat as a teen, but I still remember how to fix a bottle and change a nappy which I taught myself at 14 when handed a baby with no instructions.

Millions of women managed to feed their baby's just fine before the NHS or the internet or books on parenting existed.

So sick of people taking no personal responsibility for their own lives and own failures. I feel sorry for the baby, not his Mother.

I feel sorry for you for being such a fuckwit leigha.

GF surely?

Hopefully. The alternative is that someone can't tell the difference between nappy changing and lactation failure, which would be concerning.

Can I ask at what point people forget that google translate also exists
Can I ask why you think Google translate is a form of magic that accurately translates complex issues from one language to another?

Or would that be pathetically passive agressive of me?

There was a recent judgement on a child brain damaged by missed hypoglycemia.
I suggest people read things like that rather than relying on the Daily Mail for their medicolegal information.

Such a tragic story. Given my experience I can see how this happened.

I had a large postpartum haemorrhage and didn’t produce any colostrum. Not a droplet. I expressed my concern that I wasn’t producing anything and was dismissed my many midwives that my milk would come in soon. I was adamant my baby wasn’t getting anything and a lactation consultant came in and tried to manually express for half an hour and got nothing. She told me it was normal given what had happened to me and told me to persist in getting the baby to latch.

12 hours after he was born he has still not been fed as nothing was coming out. He had had no wet nappies and had become very sleepy. It took me, hooked up to about 8 drips/machines etc. Saying I was leaving the hospital to get formula for the nurses to admit they had formula and I was allowed to use it if I wanted to. My son gulped down that formula and I strongly believe if I had persisted in trying to feed him, while producing nothing something tragic like this story in the news would have happened.

I am appalled by some of the responses here. It seems some people are completely unaware of the current state of crisis in maternity units across the country.

There’s an awful myth that clearly persists that women instinctively know how to care for a baby. That’s not the case. Most women don’t know how often to feed a newborn or how to identity a problem. The idea that a baby will cry if they’re hungry is not the case if they’re unwell and already suffering dehydration, sleepy etc.

My twins were in nicu, one for two months, and even I couldn’t get the help I needed to bf. They wanted me to pump as it was more convenient for them. When I was able to hold them and try to latch, i would end up soaked in milk where it was all falling out of their mouth, every time I fed them I had to lie them on two Muslins to soak it all up. They’d feed until they were exhausted then wake up screaming in hunger and I’d have to use their tube. When I asked for help I was handed a bottle of formula. They preferred me bottle feeding them because then they could measure how much they had (especially for the one with a serious health issue). I kept trying to latch them until they were 3 months old and I spent hours every day on line trying to get help, improve their latch etc. I had regular visits from my HV but they never actually gave any practical help just told me not to feel guilty for failing, which I did, massively.

If I couldn’t get proper support with a baby as an inpatient for two months and as an English speaker, no wonder this happened.

Last year I took a job as a Maternity Voices rep for my area and one of the main focusses is improving PN care. I would urge all of you with negative stories to contact your local CCG and ask to be put in touch with your local maternity Voices partnership or Maternity Voices Representative if they have one.

If any of you are in Dorset, please contact me - these stories are crucial for getting the professionals to listen to me and make positive changes.