Horrifying story about how neglect by midwives caused a baby's death.

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I have to say, the attitude of these midwives sounds completely familiar to me. I feel so lucky that I got my caesarean.
When my friend had her baby at the Royal Free I was shouted at for getting her some food because 'she has to get up and get it herself' - she was alone apart from me and had had a baby a few hours before.

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article191790 7.ece

i am saddened, but sadly not surprised

i had a homebirth with ds and it was wonderful.

if i was ever to have another baby then i would not do it in hospital.

i think they are overstretched and under too much pressure.

at one point during my homebirth i had three midwives here - it was great

What a terrrible and sad report on the timesonline, and how sad and terrible some of your birth stories are. I am so sorry for you and the family in the news item.

My experiences were all postive, so sorry that your weren't.

There are some good birth stories on mn too. here

Sorry for the poor family. The "care" I experienced at the birth of DD1 was truly horrific, so I am not at all surprised by the story. This sort of thing must be happening regularly.

My horror story actually included a blatant attempt to falsify medical records.

omg this is such a chilling story. poor couple.

When is it alright for women to scream in pain and be ignored? For a man to beg for help for his wife and be dismissed? Oh, on an NHS labour ward. You don't think these things happen in Britain until you give birth. The shame. My heart goes out to the parents

Another one glad to have opted for cs.

i encountered one terrible midwife when i had ds and she left me feeling awful for a very long time. Luckily all the other doctors and midwives i met were very good and ds was born healthy after a very long and difficult birth by c section. I am really worried by cases like these. I can't begin to understand what those poor parents had to go through and i also can't begin to understand how midwives like that a] want to be midwives and b] are allowed to wreak their cruelty and negligence on people and babies who are so vulnerable.

not funding maternity services must be such a bad false economy when you think of the costs of caring for even a single disabled child. Not to mention the cost for bereaved parents/traumatised mother.
Of all the things to skimp on....

Asolutly disgusting! Those poor people!

My first birth was OK, but the aftercare was appauling,

I had my 2nd at home and it was wonderful.

As an ex-midwife this left me feeling depressed. The sad thing is that in such a medicalised approach to birth the mother is treated appallingly by doctors and midwives who see her as a silly little girl with an illness to be cured.
Birth IS painful but a sensitive midwife would work with the mother and offer support - not brusquely tell her off for complaining about the pain.

Sadly the maternity services are in crisis which is why I left. Labour wards are high pressure, high demand environments with less and less staff to run them. In that kind of atmosphere it's not surprising you get this kind of attitude and response. It's utterly dreadful - poor couple, what a dreadful experience to go through.

Agree with ViciousSS that there must be a culture of contempt for women in that hospital. It sends a chill down my spine the number of times the couple tried to get help but were belittled, leading to the death of their most precious. That the husband was a journalist and presumably well spoken (as opposed to rude yob) could not get the midwives to believe him makes me ask myself what it would take to access to medical services at the hospital which is there to provide it.

auntyspan, you wrote: "you need to balance knowing what you want and putting that across to the professionals, to not appearing to be a fussy "know-it-all" who immediately gets the back up of the midwives / doctors." Even in a life-and-death situation, the parents have to worry about the sensibilities of the healthcare professionals? How does one communicate distress and urgency without showing distress or panic?

Something in their upbringing or in the conditions under which they worked made those midwives lose all empathy for vulnerable women in pain. Inhuman, indeed.

That is a truly shocking story.

I was, on the whole, lucky that most of the mws when I had my sons were great. However, there were a few who I found rude and incompetant

I was induced with DS1 and 4 hours after they administred the prostin pessary, I was getting contractions, which the mws didn't believe. I remeber almost begging them for pain releif but I was told I was just constipated My waters broke eventaully, and they wetre still iffy about it. It wasn't until I screamed that I "DON'T NORMALL SIT IN FUCKING GREEN PUDDLES" that they moved their arses.

Fortunately, that was at the changeover of a shift and I didn;t see them again during my stay. The rest of the midwives were great (except the one who told me to stop shouting when I was in labour. I just said you'd be shouting if you felt like you were shitting a watermelon)

Reading this makes me glad that my family is complete

I really feel for the poor poor parebnts

I don't think you can blame the medicalised approach - it's the rubbish midwives who were possibly overstretched who seem to be at fault in this case, rather than the type of birth per se.

So agree with this from Blushoes:

"auntyspan, you wrote: "you need to balance knowing what you want and putting that across to the professionals, to not appearing to be a fussy "know-it-all" who immediately gets the back up of the midwives / doctors." Even in a life-and-death situation, the parents have to worry about the sensibilities of the healthcare professionals? How does one communicate distress and urgency without showing distress or panic?"

Yes I really don't think getting the backs up of medical professionals should even be a consideration, ever, in any medical situation. We know they have power of life and death over us, we just hope they won't abuse it even if we don't happen to be their cup of tea.

This sad sad story reminds me so much of bubble and how she lost her ds

Blueshoes / VSS - all I'm saying is that mw's will speak to hundreds of parents every week who all think they're in a life or death situation, and 99 times out of 100 they're not. Obviously that doesn't give mw's carte blanche to be rude, unsympathetic or downright unprofessional (like in this case).

In an ideal world we, as parents (or parents to be) should be allowed to shout, scream and panic as much as we want and the healthcare professionals that we've put our LOs lives in the hands of should treat us with respect and understanding and take our concerns seriously. In reality, as we all know, that doesn't happen - regardless of whether it's because a unit is overstretched or because the midwife is a bitch.

VSS - when you say "Even in a life-and-death situation, the parents have to worry about the sensibilities of the healthcare professionals? How does one communicate distress and urgency without showing distress or panic?" - are you referring to your perception of a life or death situation? As I said above, I'm afraid that's an hourly occurance if you're a midwife.

I'm not saying this isn't a dispicable story and all the professionals involved should be discplined. It's a very tragic occurance that is very very rare and is clearly due to a mismanaged labour.

I had two very medicalised pregnancies and labours due to a medical condition, but I was seen to by a team of 5 specialised midwives.

With my first, I was induced after labour not progressing after my waters broke, and I knew that I would probably need to have an epidural at some point.

I was tossing up whether to have one right at the start, or to "experience labour" first, as was recommended by the midwife!

I lasted two hours, then got the epidural, it was only then that the midwife told me that womenn who get induced only normally last half an hour.

Reading these stories really makes my heart go out to these parents, and makes me thankful for my medical condition that seems to have got me "special care".

Hi auntyspan, I was quoting blushoes.

But to be frank, I think it's irrelevant whether a woman is in a life and death situation or not. She still deserves to be treated with respect, compassion and decency, even if she is a nightmare PITA. (Have no axe to grind on this one btw because I had caesareans. Wisely, by the looks of it.)

auntyspan, I, rather than ViciousSS was the one who spoke about life-and-death situations. Yes, it is the parents' perception to which I refer. But does it matter? Patients come with feelings and emotions too. And surely the job of the midwife is to be reassuring and give the lady the benefit of the doubt at this particularly vulnerable time, could be her first labour.

You said "In an ideal world, we, as parents (or parents to be) should be allowed to shout, scream and panic as much as we want and the healthcare professionals that we've put our LOs lives in the hands of should treat us with respect and understanding and take our concerns seriously. In reality, as we all know, that doesn't happen - regardless of whether it's because a unit is overstretched or because the midwife is a bitch."

I'm very sad to read that (as I understand you are an ex-midwife), but that is not an "ideal world". That is every woman's entitlement. One-to-one midwifery care during labour. If the unit is overstretched, it is not the woman's fault for not phrasing her request in a polite enough manner to not get the midwife's back up. It is the failure of the system which forces midwives to work in such conditions that their power over limited resources allows them to adopt a mantle of godlike arrogance (at worst) or behave as an informal triage nurse (at best).

Barring abuse of hospital staff, it is NOT wrong to show distress or panic or be a bit shouty if one is in pain and being ignored.

auntyspan, I am not having a go at you. Midwives in UK are currently being made to work under appalling conditions. It is one of the most worthwhile professions to go into. The midwife who attended to me for my elective cs was absolutely lovely. I almost wanted to tell her to go and attend to a labouring woman who needed her more - and she was very very overstretched, running between wards.

But we need to recognise when a line has been crossed. I come from a family of doctors and have no interest in dissing heathcare professionals. But my brother (who quit his consultancy training to become a GP so that he could have more patient contact) said that the callousness and butchery he witnessed during his rotation in an obstetric ward was one of the most depressing he has ever come across. It is almost like it is alright (in some hospitals) to trivialise women's pain and distress, when they are labouring.

The cruelty is almost institutionalised. And let us not forget that prior to medical progress, giving birth was one of the most dangerous things a woman can do. So very often, it IS "life-and-death", if only someone would listen.

This story is really upsetting.

I was always taught in nursing school that PAIN IS WHAT THE PATIENT TELLS YOU IT IS! Granted there are drug seekers etc that you have to watch out for but I always take peoples' complaints of pain very seriously. I also watch them for non verbal signs of pain in case they are trying to put on a brave face when really they are in pain.

I cannot believe that anyone would be so arrogant and hostile as to tell a labouring mother that she is "a silly girl" when she is obviously in agony. It is appalling. All of us (nurses and midwives) are incredibly burnt out and overstretched and we have to make really tough decisions about who gets care on a ward at any given time. But there is no excuse for humiliating a patient this way!!

I'm not a midwife I am a medical RN but I don't understand why they wouldn't get the medics in ASAP if the fetal heart rate was in the boots. Shit I certainly would! If I was being OTT then the docs could tell me off later.

I absolutely agree with you both. It is a basic woman's right to be treated with respect and sympathy for what is the most precious and special time - and their most vunerable. People, in my experience, are attracted to the profession for the reasons you list. It is only when they start working in such dreadfully stressful situations that they become hardened to the circumstances - I'm afraid it is many midwives' way of coping.

But stamping our feet and saying this won't change the fact the NHS, particularly this area, is on its knees. It's like any other profession - teachers who don't really care all that much if your LO can't write his name by the age of 6; police officers who aren't really bothered that he criminal they just let off will probably offend again with the next few days - there are factions of EVERY profession that take advantage of the fact they are in a position of power and abuse it.

Ohh it's so difficult, this one. I want to agree wholeheartedly with you (and I do, in principle) but it just doesn't happen like that - right or wrong. And it should be, but it isn't, and having false expectations I'm afraid sometimes makes the situation worse