I believed the doctors. Later, I felt like a fool

In a statement to the inquiry – much of it redacted at the request of lawyers – Theresa Smith told how the short life of baby Sophia had been a maelstrom of emotion.

Her newborn daughter went from being so poorly because of breathing difficulties that parents Theresa and Matthew had an emergency christening to recovering so quickly the hospital were discussing her being able to go home.

She said: “I remember being so full of joy that I very nearly somersaulted, then remembered, ‘You’ve just had a baby and you’re not 16 anymore’.”

But, Mrs Smith added: “Everything changed on Day 10. She was looking very pale. I started to say to them the baby’s pale, and they said, ‘No she’s not’. I said, ‘Her skin tone has changed. She’s very white’.”

Unknown to the couple, the hospital had put Sophia on strong antibiotics as they suspected she had the Mrsa-type infection which ultimately killed her, 12 days after being born in March 2017. Her parents believe the infection was passed on from her central line, a tube inserted to give fluids or medication.

Her parents fought for six months before receiving her post-mortem report. Hospital letters did not even spell their baby’s name correctly.

The family have been told Sophia’s death is being investigated by the Crown Office but have never been told what aspect of her death will be covered. They have been warned any Fatal Accident Inquiry could take another decade.

Mrs Smith said: “I only got to hold Sophia twice, once to change her nappy and when she died in my arms.”

She said she “felt like a fool” for believing doctors, who assured her Sophia’s death was “an isolated case.” She said: “They said we were the only ones. That it’s never been heard of, ‘There’s no problem in this big fancy hospital of ours, no one else has died of this. We’ve never heard of anyone else dying of this, nothing like this has ever happened in this hospital before, you’re the only ones, you’re an isolated case.’

“I said, do you need to tell anyone, do you need to do anything about this? He told me no, as Sophia was an isolated case, that it’s never happened before, it will probably never happen again.

“I read all those same sentences verbatim in a newspaper about another mother talking about the death of her child. She had been told her child was the only one that had passed away from an infection at the hospital; that this is isolated; nothing like this has ever happened here before. There’s no problem with infection control here, nothing like this will probably ever happen again. ‘It’s such a lightning strike’ was the phrase he used.

“I felt like such a fool when I read that in the paper because I had believed him.

“Because you don’t know: you can identify that they’re arrogant and you can identify that they have very little people skills, but you still have this level of respect where you think well, they’re the doctors, they’re the consultants, they’re geniuses in their fields.

“You believe them until you start reading it in the papers that they’ve told every other family that too.”