A London hospital has opened an investigation after a woman whose baby died in the womb had to deliver her child home due to lack of beds and keep her remains in the fridge when A&E staff left. to say that he could not store them securely.
Laura Brody and her partner, Lawrence, said they were “fucked up in hell” after being sent home from Lewisham University Hospital to wait for a bed when they were told their baby was no longer throbbing. heart but there were no beds available immediately to give birth, the BBC reported. .
Two days later, after waking up in severe pain, Brody, who was four months pregnant, gave birth to agony in her bathroom toilet. “And it was then,” he told the station, “I saw he was a child.”
The couple, who wanted further testing later, called 999, but were told it was not an emergency. They wrapped the baby’s remains in a damp cloth, placed it in a Tupperware box, and went to A&E where they were told to wait in the general waiting room, they said.
“I was there holding my baby inside a tupperware box, crying, with 20 or 30 more people in the waiting room,” she said.
She was eventually taken to a bay and told she would require surgery to remove the placenta. But with the crowded waiting room hot and the staff refusing to store leftovers or even look inside the Tupperware box, they decided that when midnight arrived they had no choice but to couple would take the remains of their baby home.
“There was no one in the hospital willing to take care of our baby. No one seemed to know what was going on,” he told the BBC. “It was almost as if no one wanted to admit it. Because if they did, they would have to deal with the problem.”
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He said he took his son’s remains home in a taxi and cleaned the space in the fridge. “It was a lonely, surreal moment wiping a space in my fridge,” he said.
Brody said the whole experience “felt so grotesque.”
“When things go wrong with pregnancy, there are no systems to help you, even with all the staff and their experts, and they are working very hard, the process is so flawed that it looked like we had fallen into hell, ”he told Radio 4’s Today program.
The case is said to have raised widespread concern among activists who argue that care should be given adequate priority to abortion within hospitals, including A&Es.
In a statement to the BBC, Lewisham and the Greenwich NHS Trust said: “We are deeply saddened and offer our deepest condolences to Mrs Brody and her partner for the tragic loss of their baby and these traumatic experiences.
“A thorough investigation is underway to understand where care failures have occurred so that the necessary changes and improvements can be made.”
Women’s Health Minister Maria Caulfield said: “Every loss of a child is a tragedy, and my deepest condolences are to Mrs Brody and her family.
“This government is committed to making the NHS the safest place in the world for maternity care and we have invested £ 95 million in hiring 1,200 midwives and 100 obstetricians to consult, while our new group of work on maternity disparities is exploring how to further reduce the number of stillbirths and maternal deaths.
“Later this year, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists will publish new guidelines that will support NHS trusts to provide more personalized care for miscarriage, helping women with every step of their journey, including treatment and management of future pregnancies “.
The couple’s story appears in a BBC documentary, Involuntary abortion: the search for answers.