surprised that there isn't a thread on the midwife being struck off and the

[2shoes]

call for independant midwives to be made to have insurance only link I could find to story

about time imo

madwomanintheattic - your story is interesting. You are very generous spirited towards the hospital and staff who cared for you in labour. When I have observed students working (admittedly this isn't something I'm an expert on) they have always been closely supervised - especially when they are caring for mothers who are having additional monitoring, as you would have had as a VBAC. I'm so sorry for you that you have had such a fight to get compensation for your precious dd. I do think when the issue of insurance of IM is discussed people don't realise that malpractice has to be proven before a pay-out can be made anyway. I get the feeling some people think that any baby damaged at birth within the NHS is entitled to compensation.

"I seriously doult that many IM deliver babies weekly. The majority of women cannot afford an IM. IM give a high level of care because they don't have many clients.

My nhs community midwife is on call for a homebirth once a week. She told me that she gets to do a homebirth about once a month."

I can assure that I couldn't make a living on one homebirth a month! On average I would book 3 births per month to ensure I was able to get to all ny clients without conflict of due dates.

I agree with others that we simply don't know all the facts here.
(1) Was the diabetes already known about? And if not why not? Surely even an ind MW would recommend the old 'lucozade test' - but, there again, maybe the mother was having tests done under the NHS - in which case maybe the mother was responsible for telling (or not) the MW she had hired privately.

(2) If the diabetes and risk of a very large baby was indeed known about, why was the mother not under the care of a consultant? At that stage I think most ind MWs would reconsider the position.

(3) Why was only one MW present? People have pointed out that the baby can easily arrive too quickly for another MW to get there. But in this instance wasn't the birth induced? Surely you would call the other MW before you broke the waters, particularly if it wasn't a first birth?

curlywurly's comments "I can assure that I couldn't make a living on one homebirth a month" raise another interesting question. If the home birth is decided against, whether this be the decision of the mother or the MW, does the ind MW lose the fee, or part of the fee?

I hasten to add that I'm absolutely certain that curlywurly would never proceed with a HB if she felt that there might be any risk. But if a MW can't make a living on one HB a month, but only books three so as, understandably, to avoid conflict of dates, wouldn't this lead to a significant fall in income if one is cancelled? Or is the fee paid whether the HB goes ahead or not?

Bellisima - don't know if you've seen this or if it answers your questions - it's the hearing findings from the NMC :

www.nmc-uk.org/aDisplayDocument.aspx?DocumentID=7430

but it does clearly refer to the fact that she failed to act on the 2 episodes of glucose in urine and failed to refer the lady to an obs - which would suggest that she wasn't already under the care on anyone else.

(Did a link earlier in the thread but didn't do it properly )

Apologies and thanks Sassy! All the (brief) reports I saw in the papers/BBC news seemed to come from exactly the same source and leave many questions unanswered.

I have to add that, having read that link, I think that the case is absolutely clear-cut.

I should also say that I have three friends who have had v successful HBs without being hacked to pieces!