I’ve lost two babies in three months. Enduring the trauma alone is just wrong ‘I’ll be on my own with nobody there to help me’
That’s the damning indictment from a woman who finds it incredulous that she can sit in a cafe with her husband but he couldn’t hold her hand as she was given the most heartbreaking news any expectant mother can receive
LYING back on the bed, Sinead Hingston closed her eyes and tried to take in what the sonographer was gently explaining to her. She couldn’t quite believe that this was happening again, she had been so sure that this time things were fine.
‘All I heard was that they couldn’t find my pregnancy, that it was in an “unknown location”, and that I would have to go into Holles Street to have my bloods taken. There was this instant feeling of dread, that I was going to have to go through it all again, on my own.’
She rang her husband Michael, briefly explained what they needed to do and told him to meet her at the door of the clinic. Driving to the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin city centre, Michael tried to comfort her.
‘He was telling me that no matter what happened, we were in this together,’ she says. ‘But of course, once I got there it didn’t feel like that because he wasn’t allowed in. After they did my bloods, I was admitted and that was the bit I really struggled with. Being in a hospital bed on my own for four or five days did nothing for my mental health. I went in on a Friday and on the Monday they decided to operate, I didn’t get to see Michael before it.
‘It was all so nerve-wracking, there were plenty of tears behind those curtains, into my pillow. I was trying to stay strong, but it’s the one time in your life you shouldn’t have to stay strong. You should be allowed grieve and cry and have your partner there with you. I made the baby with him.’
The surgery, which took place two weeks ago, revealed that Sinead, a 39-year-old mother of two living in south Co Dublin, had suffered an ectopic pregnancy. It was her second loss within three months, she miscarried at the end of May. Both times she heard the devastating news on her own, following scans.
Her story is not unusual. All this week women and relatives of expectant or new mums have been sharing grim experiences of solo scans, miscarriages and missed births, where partners have not been not been allowed to visit our maternity hospitals except for an hour or two in the delivery rooms.
RTÉ’s Liveline heard from a grandmother who shared in heart-breaking detail her daughter’s miscarriage, which she went through on her own last Monday. And there was Sarah, who is expecting her first child after six miscarriages and wondered why pubs are allowed to reopen while her husband is still not allowed to attend their nerve-wracking baby scans.
‘Why do the vintners have a stronger voice than the mothers?’ she asked.
Stringent maternity restrictions, in place since lockdown, have been slow to ease off. A situation that has been blasted for causing unnecessary extra stress and heartache for pregnant women and their families. The matter was raised in the Dáil on Wednesday by Social Democrats TD Holly Cairns and Sinn Féin’s Réana Cronin, who claimed the regulations ‘are straight up bonkers’ when pubs could re-open. She said it seemed ‘more important for a father to be able to wet his baby’s head rather than to see his baby’s head’.
‘I know public health is the priority,’ Holly Cairns told the Irish Daily Mail. ‘As it should be. But it’s difficult to understand why you’re allowed to attend a wedding with 49 other people but your partner can’t accompany you to a prenatal scan. The restrictions were introduced six months ago. As the situation has evolved, many other restrictions in general society have eased and I would urge the HSE and the maternity hospitals to revise these restrictions as a matter of urgency.’
Indeed, questions have been raised about the power of certain kinds of lobby groups, since pubs have been now given an opening date, September 21, but expectant parents have been told, in no uncertain terms, that hospitals will not bow to political pressure.
Master of the National Maternity Hospital, Prof Shane Higgins, this week said the restrictions have kept Covid-19 out of the hospital.
‘I am happy to respond to any parliamentarian or anybody else, but we won’t be forced into making knee-jerk decisions because we are being put under pressure,’ he stated. ‘That is not in the best interest of anyone. We have a lot of staff, patients and new-born babies and we will do it as best we can.’
He added that their protocol is under constant review and there is a possibility birth partners will be allowed at the 20-week anomaly scan, but not for other scans or antenatal appointments because it would double the footfall into the hospital.
‘The 20-week anomaly scan is a very big, watershed moment in the pregnancy,’ he explained. ‘That would be the next appropriate thing to do.’
Sinead Hingston already had experience of going through a major pregnancy procedure on her own. Tragically, her first husband died when she was expecting her oldest child, Lily, now 8.
‘I’ve never gotten over that experience,’ she says. ‘I still get shivers down my spine thinking about going through that labour on my own. It’s just not right.’
It’s a rather cruel twist of fate that saw her lose two muchwanted pregnancies with her now husband, Michael. Even crueller that she went through both of them without him. ‘The first time I had to go in for a D&C [a surgical procedure that clears out the uterus], Michael drove me in and dropped me at the door of the hospital,’ she says. ‘I was put under a general anaesthetic, and then afterwards he came back to pick me up at the door again.
‘It was all very surreal. Having to go home and answer all his questions about what had happened was so very difficult because I didn’t want to talk about it. I was distraught, so trying to explain everything to him was really hard and emotional.’
In August, while on a staycation in Kerry, Sinead discovered she was pregnant again. But the scan at the private clinic, which Michael was not allowed to attend, revealed there was an issue and she went straight to Holles Street.
Last week, eager to get out the house for a short spell, Sinead and Michael went for lunch in a local café. ‘I was sitting there, in a coffee shop with plenty of other people around me, with no mask on because I was eating my lunch,’ she says. ‘We were there for about 50 minutes, and I said to Michael: “Why couldn’t you have been in that scanning room with me? When they told me: ‘I’m sorry there is no heartbeat, this is not a viable pregnancy.’”
‘Those scanning rooms are massive and they have big windows, there’s really no reason your husband can’t walk up two flights of stairs, go straight in and then out again. It really got to me. The
‘It’s the one time in your life you shouldn’t have to stay strong’
priorities are wrong here. They’re forgetting about this entire section of women, and the men who are missing these scans and in some cases actual births. Why can’t they just take temperatures at the door and ask the usual questions.’
However, Minister of State for Health Mary Butler insisted in the Dáil this week that these restrictions have helped lead to no Covid19 maternal deaths in Ireland and a very low virus rate among pregnant women.
Yet there are discrepancies in policies between the different maternity hospitals around the country, which is also causing huge disquiet.
‘Some maternity hospitals in Dublin have seen a slight easing of restrictions,’ says Deputy Cairns. ‘Yet in Cork it’s the opposite. Partners can only be present for active labour and aren’t permitted to attend any other part of it, including prenatal scans.’
Yesterday there was a small glimmer of hope, when it was announced after a Cork/Kerry HSE briefing that a review on maternity protocols will be carried out ‘over the next few weeks’. There will also be one set of guidelines for all Cork and Kerry, rather than a different one for each hospital.
When questioned in the Dáil, Butler said there couldn’t be a one-size-fits-all approach to visitor restrictions, which are currently being decided by the individual maternity hospitals.
So while at the University Hospital Galway partners are admitted during C-section, and in Mayo partners can attend with mothers in labour, in other hospitals partners can only attend for the active labour, meaning some mums can be on their own for hours.
It’s a situation that Raluca O’Driscoll finds particularly galling. The 26-year-old from Wilton in Cork is expecting her first child on November 16.
‘If we were all in the same boat, then I would be understanding and not making a fuss,’ she says. ‘But I feel like I’m being hard done by down here in Cork, where they seem to be still very strict.
‘We understand that restrictions should be in place, and I’m not asking for things to go back to normal, because things are not normal, I understand that. But with the easing of other general society restrictions...
‘Because of previous issues I’ve had, I’m booked in for an elective Caesarean. My partner Shane will be allowed into the delivery room for about an hour and a half, but not up to the wards. Obviously I’m going to be spending a bit longer in the hospital than other women who give birth the usual way. I’m dreading it, I’ll be on my own for four or five days, with no one there to help me. I’m hearing mixed reports about women’s experiences, some are saying the help was outstanding, others are saying it’s so busy, the staff are overworked. The idea of ringing a bell, asking nurses to come in and help with the baby if I want to go for a shower, I feel like I’ll be nagging.
‘But if there was a two or even one-hour gap every evening, when Shane could come into me, at least that way I can do something then.
‘It’s stressing me an awful lot and gets me down. I’ve gone through all of my pregnancy in a pandemic, with no support. I’ve been admitted to hospital overnight twice with pelvic issues, no one was allowed in to see me, and I couldn’t get antenatal classes so now I’m a first-time mum trying to learn what I can by Googling videos.’
Colin Mahony, a soon to be firsttime dad, is deeply frustrated that at a time when other restrictions are easing, it’s unlikely he will be allowed to spend more than a couple of hours with his wife Sandra, when she gives birth to their baby at the Coombe in Dublin in November. ‘We both work in healthcare, we understand Covid and all the risks, so when I wasn’t allowed into the scans, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world for me,’ he says. ‘It is what it is, the hospitals need to do what they do.
‘But what’s bugging me now is that I can sit in a pub with my wife, have a meal and a couple of drinks, or go to a wedding the night before, but I can’t be with her for the entire labour.
‘When she’s about to push, I can be there, I know that. But our biggest worry is how long is she going to be in labour for? It’s our first baby, it could go on for hours. She doesn’t want to be sitting on her own and she shouldn’t be worrying about that now or stressing about it then.
‘The Government is saying it’s trying to protect the staff, that’s fine. But my issue is that when the staff go in to work, they could have been at a wedding or a dinner with family the night before. No one is testing staff so they could bring the virus in as easily as I could. I haven’t gone to the hairdressers since this all started, I go to work and I go home, my family haven’t seen my wife since she got pregnant. We haven’t seen anyone.
‘The Coombe seems to be very strict, you’re only allowed in for active labour and there’s no visiting afterwards. But why can’t we wear all the PPE gear, and if someone is in labour for 24 hours, why can’t I go in for some of it at least an hour, then leave for two?
‘My wife won’t talk about it, she’s too anxious and it’s too upsetting for her. The only reason I’m talking about it is that I’m hoping something will change, if not for me, for someone else.’
Since Covid-19 struck, antenatal teacher Sarah Flynn has been counselling and comforting dozens of anxious, expectant parents. She runs her own business, Relax Balance Birth, but has spent much of her time over the last few weeks on social media, sharing clients’ fears and calling for a review of how maternity hospitals are deciding on their protocols.
‘The big thing I’m hearing from new parents is that they totally understand there have to be restrictions,’ she says. ‘And if there has been some sort of expert risk assessment done and it’s been found that having an extra body in the room is really going to increase the risks, then people are very understanding and reasonable.
‘But we’re six months into Covid and all we’re hearing is that we’re now living alongside the virus, but new parents are not getting any explanation about hospital restrictions beyond that it’s “Covid policy”. That’s it, full stop. Partners in particular are saying to me, “We’re coming from the same house, the same bed, the same car, if we’re both washing the hands and wearing the masks why can’t we be there to support the women?”
‘Even after the most straightforward of births, new mums will spend at least two or three nights in hospital and some have told me they were in the same nightdress for days because they had no one to hold baby so they could get a shower. Or that baby was struggling to feed so they couldn’t put them down and had no help, despite being utterly exhausted.
‘You do have to wonder if we’re paying the price for infrastructural issues and underfunded maternity hospitals. The same way these things have come up in the schools and everything else.
‘It seems to me that pre-existing weak spots across society are now being exacerbated by Covid, that’s the fairest way I can put it.’
Indeed the recent maternity experiences of some women have highlighted serious flaws in our healthcare system.
‘The supports aren’t there afterwards,’ says Sinead Hingston. ‘There was nothing to help us with the aftermath. I was completely traumatised... I’d never gone through anything like it before. And thinking back on it now I have palpitations.
‘We’ve totally put any thoughts of trying again [for a baby] on the back burner until all this has calmed done. I just wouldn’t be able to do it again by myself.’