New mother ‘bled to death after getting lost at ERI’
● Tragic incident comes just four days after birth of her premature son
A new mother has died after suffering a suspected massive haemorrhage while lying on an Edinburgh hospital stairwell.
Amanda Cox, 34, from Peebles, was found on a rarely used staircase on Monday evening at the Royal Infirmary seven hours after she was last seen.
She died a short time later despite attempts to save her.
It is believed she may have got lost while trying to find her way back to her ward. Her prematurely-born four-day-old son was being cared for in the nearby special care baby unit.
A new mother is feared to have bled to death in a hospital stairwell in Edinburgh after getting lost on her way back to a ward from seeing her premature baby son.
Police and hospital staff launched a frantic search for Amanda Cox and appealed for public help after the 34-yearold was reported missing from the Royal Infirmary in Little France on Monday evening wearing just a T-shirt, pyjama trousers and slippers.
But while the search was ongoing outside, Ms Cox lay dying within the hospital, the Scotsman can reveal.
The last confirmed sighting of Amanda, from Peebles, was at 3pm on Monday.
The mother, who gave birth to baby boy Murray four days earlier, was found seven hours later, alive but fighting for her life, in a rarely used staircase within the hospital after suffering
a suspected massive haemorrhage.
She died a short time later despite attempts to save her.
Ms Cox is understood to have been a patient on ward 210 or 211 – both specialist maternity units – after giving birth. Her
son is believed to have been admitted to the special care baby unit – the Simpson Neonatal Unit for babies born prematurely or sick – downstairs from the maternity wards, having been born five days prematurely.
Ms Cox was found at about 10pm on Monday in a stairwell leading to a locked door to the roof above ward 209 – on the opposite side of the hospital block – by police trawling CCTV.
Her family were unavailable for comment last night. A family friend said: “Amanda had been suffering headaches even before she had been in hospital for the birth and was due to see a specialist.
“Apparently she was going back to her room for medication, but took a wrong turning and came out of the neonatal ward into a disused ward.
“They think it was a brain haemorrhage or a stroke or heart attack, but we will just have to wait on the post mortem.”
A police source said: “There was nothing apparent that would suggest this is anything other than the tragic death of a new mother who had recently given birth.
“She was found within the hospital and obviously there will be aspects of the investigation that will look into the seven hours she was unaccounted for until she was found.”
A spokesman for Police Scotland said: “The death is being treated as unexplained, but not suspicious.”
A full post-mortem examination will be carried out and a fatal accident inquiry into the death and the details of the search may be ordered by the Crown Office.
Hospital bosses offered their condolences to Ms Cox’s grieving family and said staff would be helping police with their investigations.