Hospital missed mum’s signs of pre-eclampsia

A PREGNANT teenager’s baby died after she was sent home from hospital with lifethreatening pre-eclampsia.

Four weeks after medics ignored early signs of the condition, Sarah Cowan’s baby boy was dead and she was fighting for her life with septicaemia.

The distraught mum, then just 19, sought answers but it took five years before a settlement of £12,000 compensation was paid to her. Sarah is satisfied she has answers to what went wrong but bitterly disappointed at the lack of care received at Crosshouse Hospital, near Kilmarnock.

Sarah, now 25, from Ayr, said: “I am too scared to get pregnant in case the same thing happens again and I have to go back to

BY VIVIENNE AITKEN Health Editor that hospital. Eventually I will want to have more children but not any time soon.”

In November 2014, Sarah was 30 weeks pregnant and was being sick constantly.

She said: “I went to the maternity unit at Crosshouse Hospital. They did full tests, said I had a kidney infection and sent me home with antibiotics.

“But I later learned I should have been kept in because they had noticed I had early stages of pre-eclampsia.

“Three or four weeks later, I was still feeling the same. I went to the hospital to get it checked out and they said all my vitals were really bad.

“They told me I had severe signs of pre-eclampsia and that I had lost the baby.”

Two days later, on December 22, 2014, Sarah had to heartbreakingly deliver her son, Kamden, and then on December 31, she laid him to rest.

Last year, she was awarded £12,000 for the loss suffered after the health board accepted the death could have been avoided.

Sarah urged mums-to-be to trust their instincts. She said: “If you feel something is not right always get a second opinion, even if you need to nag them for one.”

Hazel Borland, nurse director at NHS Ayrshire & Arran, said: “The tragic death of any baby is something we take very seriously and our thoughts and sympathies are always with the families concerned.”