A mother's experience of Oxford University Hospitals Maternity Services in 1985:
My baby girl was born in 1985 at term with HIE and necrotising enteritis, she was otherwise a healthy term baby.
She was physically chest clamped at birth when being examined, meconium poured from her. Of course I was alarmed at this point - she was shown to me I went to put her to my breast as I had done with my other children but she was taken and put in a cot in the corner of the room and I was told they don’t all feed straight away. She did not cry!!
I was so sure something had gone wrong but was afraid to ask. When, eventually, I was taken back to the ward, I tried to feed her but she just wasn’t interested - this was early hours of the morning throughout the day she did not feed or cry. Even when the paed did checks I pointed out that my baby’s right leg was occasionally jerking. She checked my baby and said she was perfect!
I knew something was not right. When changing her nappy there were tiny spots of blood in it. I reported this. A nurse on the ward came to tell me that as her blood sugars were low (she still hadn’t taken a feed from me and her right leg was jerking and her eyes were looking glazed). She was taken for further tests, by this time I was feeling sick with worry and begged to go with her I had no idea where she had been taken.
Pleading with staff to let me see her, I was taken to SCBU where she was laid in a cot alone in a side room. I could see she was having, what appeared to me, to be a seizure. I picked her up and sat with her for what seemed like hours. Eventually a Dr came and suggested I go and ring my family and then come back – I was told she was fitting and that this was quite common when new born.
When I returned she was in the hot room, sedated and monitored – I was told she had a stroke. Staff seemed very distant and at times reluctant to engage. Eventually she had an MRI which revealed brain damage we were told not to expect to take her home! But she did come home briefly. She has a right hemiplegia intractable epilepsy and profoundly damaged short-term memory.
On coming home, we were completely alone and struggled for years with no clear diagnosis or understanding of her complex issues the impact on my marriage and little family was enormous. Life was so tough, everything was a fight. I am sure there was a cover up when she was born and I have so many unanswered questions.
I should have been allowed to feed her. Why didn’t she cry? Why didn’t I feel able to challenge them? Whatever happened deprived my daughter and her brothers of a good life i.e. friends, holidays, marriage, adventures and freedom. She has 24/7 support which I gave for 24 years before we got any help.