JENNI MURRAY

Why I’ll never do The Full Monty on telly again!

WHEN I read the report on the maternity services at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, I wept. An independent inquiry into the deaths of mothers and babies at the hospital had long been campaigned for by the Mail and it was seeing, in black and white, the stories of the women and infants and what they had suffered that reduced me to tears. A total of 250 cases were examined in this interim report, chaired by Donna Ockenden, a senior Midwifery Adviser to the chief executive of the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Thirteen women and 42 babies had died. There were many stillbirths. Ockenden writes of a lack of kindness and compassion among some members of the maternity team.

One woman was invited for ‘ a chat’ about the death of her baby. A ‘chat’ with no word of condolence in the letter?! Another was ‘in agony, but told it was nothing . . .the obstetrician called her ‘lazy’.

Another was ‘in great pain after delivery and left screaming for hours before it was identified that there were problems that needed intervention’. Another, who was in a midwife-led birth unit, was not adequately monitored ‘ because the unit was busy’. Her baby died.

As I read about this catalogue of incompetence and cruelty, I began to wonder if we had gone back to 1950, when my mother, delighted at the free care she would receive in the new NHS, was left alone, on her back, legs in stirrups and in terrible pain, for 24 hours.

Her life and mine were saved by a consultant, who had just come on duty and spotted the difficulties we were having, dragging me out by forceps. He saved my life, but my mother was terribly torn and a swab was left inside her; she had to return to hospital for an operation when I was two weeks old.

I firmly believe that separation, so soon after we had made a bond, damaged our relationship. It was the reason why I was an only child. We survived, just, but she wasn’t going through that again.

When my turn to give birth came around, it was the 1990s, the natural childbirth movement had begun to gain traction and I was determined I wouldn’t suffer as my mother had.

I made a plan. I wanted a natural delivery. I wanted to walk around the hospital until the crucial moment, believing gravity would help the birth. I wanted to deliver crouched over a bean-bag in a darkened room with no drugs.

All went to plan first time around in Southampton General Hospital and the second was a successful home delivery.

So, what has happened in the meantime? The review says that hundreds of women were pressured into having ‘a normal birth’.

Women can be made to feel ashamed if they can’t give birth naturally — a Caesarean has become something that’s required by women who are ‘ too posh to push’ — but it can save lives.

Or could it be money that’s at the bottom of all these tragedies? A Caesarean costs double the amount of a natural delivery. Shrewsbury and Telford has had the lowest rate of Caesareans in England for the past decade.

Maybe. But that doesn’t account for the callous and incompetent care exposed in this report.

Ockenden’s list of actions must be taken up, particularly the last. ‘Women’s choices following a shared and informed decision-making process must be respected.’