Mother sues NHS af ter her baby was left with brain damage from breastfeeding
A MOTHER claims her newborn baby was smothered at her breast and left with ‘catastrophic’ injuries after poor feeding advice from a midwife.
Julia Geis-Clements, 39, had given birth in hospital and was feeding her daughter for the first time when the child was starved of oxygen, a court heard.
She and her financier husband, Lee Clements, 41, are suing the NHS for millions claiming inadequate advice from a midwife was to blame.
Their daughter Cerys, now five, has severe brain damage, cerebral palsy, epilepsy and is visually impaired. She needs 24-hour care.
The High Court was told yesterday that Cerys would have escaped a lifetime of disability if the midwife had warned the new parents to keep one of the baby’s nostrils clear as she was
‘I felt she might be too close up’
held against her mother’s breast. The child went ‘pale and floppy’ within half an hour of the feed after her birth at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in London July 2012, the court was told.
Angus Moon, QC, said that although Mrs Geis-Clements had attended ante-natal classes, Cerys was her first baby and the ‘exhausted’ mother had no experience of feeding.
At one point, Mrs Geis-Clements felt Cerys ‘lose contact’ with the breast, the court heard. She ‘guided’ her baby back into position but, soon afterwards, Cerys seemed to doze off.
‘She did not want to disturb Cerys as she thought that she was sleeping,’ Mr Moon said. But she became alarmed when she noticed her turning ‘pale and floppy’.
The couple claim the midwife should have returned to check on Cerys ten minutes after she started feeding.
Twenty-five minutes into the feed Mr Clements rushed to find the midwife who could find no pulse in the baby.
‘In fact Cerys had suffered an episode of hypoxia which had caused her severe brain damage,’ said Mr Moon. Mrs Geis- Clements, a marketing manager, is suing Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust on Cerys’s behalf, alleging the midwife gave negligent advice. Due to the severity of her injuries, the little girl could win millions to pay for her care if Mrs Justice May rules against the NHS.
Cerys was born in the hospital’s birthing pool, and received emergency first aid immediately afterwards to help her breathe, the court heard.
She was then handed to Mrs GeisClements for her first feed.
Although the baby seemed to be ‘latched on’, her mother said she ‘felt uncomfortable’ as she could not see her face. ‘I instinctively felt that she might be too close up to my breast,’ she told the court. ‘This concern led me to check with the midwife that Cerys would be able to breathe while positioned like that. The midwife said that a baby would wriggle and pull their head back if they could not breathe properly during breastfeeding. Other than answering my query about whether Cerys could breathe, I remember that the midwife did not give me any advice about breastfeeding.’
The midwife, however, says she advised Mrs Geis-Clements that she should support the baby’s back and neck but not hold her too tightly and not hold the back of her head.
John Whitting QC, for the NHS trust, said the midwife had no recollection of Mrs Geis-Clements ‘specifically asking her about the possibility of her baby not being able to breathe during feeding’.
He said the cause of Cerys’s oxygen starvation was probably a ‘random post-natal sudden collapse’ which could not have been foreseen and in which negligence played no part.
The hearing continues.