‘I lost faith in doctors after my baby boy was stillborn’
MUM RECALLS CALLOUSNESS OF SHREWSBURY TRUST AFTER SHE LOST HER SON
A MOTHER has described her “relief” at the findings of the recent Ockenden report after she lost her baby due to improper care at the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust.
Kamaljit Uppal, 52, from Telford, was transferred to the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital in April 2003, after an antenatal appointment showed her baby Manpreet would be born breech (feet first).
Despite initially being told she was eligible for a caesarian section (C-section), this was then refused, with doctors insisting that she could have a regular birth despite Uppal’s concerns.
Speaking to Eastern Eye, Kamaljit said, “I said I would prefer a Csection. I was told from the time I spoke to my antenatal that I would be getting a C-section.
“And he turned around and he says to me, ‘No, you don’t need it, you can carry on having normal birth. There’s no need.”
Kamaljit recalled how she “did not see anybody all day” when she was in the hospital. “No doctor came to check me or anything.”
On the second day she was there, her labour pains began and she was moved into a ward with seven other expectant mothers.
Eventually her pains got so bad that the midwife performed a vaginal test and Kamaljit was found to be two to three centimetres dilated.
Her baby was in what is known as a “footling breech” position, where one of the feet was delivered before the rest of the body. To her distress and anger, the doctor continued to refuse her a C-section and left to deliver a different baby.
“He went to deliver a head-down baby. That’s what I was told by the nurse who was with me. So I said, ‘mine’s more complicated’. I started ranting and raving. And I started getting angry as well,” Kamaljit told Eastern Eye.
Manpreet was delivered up to his belly button before getting stuck.
At this point, Kamaljit’s contractions had ceased, so a crash team was called to take the mother and baby into the operating theatre. Initially upon coming around, she was told that she had delivered a healthy baby boy, but then two hours later, Kamaljit received the tragic news that her son had died.
“The shock of that – I didn’t know what to do, because I didn’t know whether I was coming and going,” she said.
It was another hour before she could hold her son.
“I didn’t know how to say goodbye. I just looked at the baby and said, ‘you’ve been a naughty boy, I’ll always love you,’” she said.
Initially her family didn’t file a complaint as they thought Manpreet’s death was an isolated incident. However, after reading an item on the news in 2013 about the Shrewsbury & Telford NHS maternity care scandal, they took legal action.
“I rang up Donna Ockenden the following day and said, ‘this is what happened with my baby.’ And when she heard my story, she said, ‘you need to get legal advice,’” Kamaljit explained.
She and her husband got in touch with lawyer Kashmir Uppal, who had previously worked with the victims of disgraced former surgeon Ian Paterson.
Kamaljit described how her family’s support was sometimes the only thing that kept her going.
“I wanted to kill myself one time. If it wasn’t for my mom, I probably wouldn’t have been here. That’s how traumatising it was,” she said.
She went on to have two more children, but Manpreet’s death still impacted her trust in the health service, Kamaljit said.
“I was scared. I lost my confidence. And I didn’t trust any of the doctors there because the only way I started trusting a doctor was when I got pregnant. I had to go into hospital with coughing and vomiting,” she explained.
Fortunately, a different doctor made the birth of Kamaljit’s next child an easier one.
“The support wasn’t there until 2015, until Donna Ockenden came on board,” Kamaljit said.
She also praised Ockenden for
her support of the mothers affected, saying she had helped them the entire time she had been onboard.
“At the moment, I am getting counselling through the Midlands partnerships, which she has recommended,” Kamaljit said.
Following the report’s publication last week, she said she wanted to see “big changes” to how maternity care is handled in the UK. In addition to the changes recommended to parliament, Kamaljit said there should be oversight of doctors and midwives.
“I also think there should be a national database, because in this hospital, the rates, errors in c-sections, was lower than any other hospital, which is a good thing.
“However, the rate of stillbirth and neonatal deaths was higher. So there should be a national database where all hospital trusts input their data. And then you can find the outliers,” she said.
As well as legal changes, Kamaljit is calling for the way grieving families are treated to change, as she later found that she and other parents received little sympathy after experiencing loss.
“When I went to find out about the post-mortem results of our son, they said ‘we took the wrong option of delivery, but your bet is to have another baby to get over this one’,” she revealed.
Lack of communication was another area Kamaljit believes is severely lacking in the trust.
In an interview with I News, she recalled how, following the loss of her son, she was put on a maternity ward with new mothers and their babies. To further compound her post-birth trauma, she said she was just resting and ‘in walks a woman saying, what milk does your baby drink?’
“I’ve been told my baby has died. I said, ‘What baby?’ and her face just dropped and she walked out. There was a lot of miscommunication,” she explained.
Kamaljit is seeking legal action against the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust and has spoken to West Mercia Police as a part of their investigation.