Western Daily Press (Saturday)
‘And then we went home with an empty car seat’ – the reality of losing a 3-day-old baby
A mother who lost her newborn baby daughter tells Helen Gadd about her heartbreak after the NHS admitted failings and how she is now living in limbo
ACHELTENHAM mother who lost her newborn baby because of “catastrophic” failings by Gloucestershire NHS has said she yearns for a “rainbow baby” but is still too fearful to try for another child.
Margot Bowtell was just three days old when she died of a hypoxic brain injury after her delivery at the midwife-run birth centre in Cheltenham.
After an agonising two-year wait for answers, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust finally admitted liability for her death, saying Margot was failed by shortcomings in care.
Although parents Laura Harvey, 35, and Craig Bowtell, 37, now have the answers they have waited so long for, Laura still feels unable to move on with her life until negotiations into the case are complete, which could still take many months.
“I still feel like I am living in limbo, made to stand still while the whole world spins around me, trying to live my life day to day,” said Laura.
“I see friends getting married, having babies, and although I know life does go on, for me I feel like I am stuck. As much as I am desperate for my rainbow baby, I just feel I can’t do that right now.
“Margot needs this time, she needs justice, she needs that legacy and that voice through me. Until this stage is finally done, I can’t move on to the next stage of my grief.
“I already feel that on my shoulders and in my body, so for me I completely fear getting pregnant right now because I don’t know how the stress I feel now would affect that, and heaven forbid that I had a miscarriage because I would probably blame that on everything I’ve gone through.
“But I also know that I am now 35 and classed as a geriatric mum. I know I am still young, but there’s that word and that fear and I can hear the clock ticking behind me.”
Since the tragedy in May 2020, the trust has taken on board all six recommendations made in the report by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch into Margot’s death, according to Laura’s solicitor Sarah Stocker, of Tees Law.
She said: “Gloucestershire Hospital NHS Foundation Trust could have averted this tragic outcome if warning signs during pregnancy and labour had been recognised and properly acted upon.”
Even before Laura’s labour, there were missed opportunities to prevent the tragedy from occurring, including a failure to undertake an updated risk assessment at 36 weeks to discuss any developments, and the lack of an obstetric review when the presence of blood-stained liquor was found during labour.
Margot was Laura and Royal Marine Craig’s first pregnancy, and she was classed as low-risk throughout, meaning the couple made the decision to deliver Margot at the Cheltenham General Hospital-based NHS birth centre.
“I was told that if at any point the midwives thought I needed to go to Gloucester, they would blue light me,” said Laura, but despite asking three times that she wanted to go to Gloucester during labour, she was told there were other things they could try before making that decision.
“All of a sudden her heart rate went and they couldn’t find it and I
Then I sat and cuddled her until her body started shutting down and it was time to remove her breathing apparatus. It took another hour and a half; she did go on breathing in my arms for an hour and a half, with Craig and me cuddling her LAURA HARVEY
remember my midwife looking at me and I could see the terror on her face which then put the fear in me,” said Laura.
“She said, you need to push and you need to get baby out as quickly as possible. I remember Craig holding my hand.
“When she was first born, she was taken to the resus table behind me so at that point I hadn’t even seen her, I didn’t even know that she was a girl or a boy. It wasn’t until a separate midwife in the room asked if I knew what sex she was and I said, no I didn’t.”
Margot was rushed first to Gloucester and then on to the Bristol neo-natal unit, but by then it was too late; irreversible and catastrophic brain damage had been done.
“The first time I saw Margot was at Gloucester Hospital in an incubator attached to loads of machines, but before that point, Craig had called me in tears. We’d been together for six years and I knew him before that in London and I had never, ever heard him cry before then. And that really broke my heart.
“The Bristol neo-natal specialist told us she was one of the poorliest babies he’d ever seen. Craig and I are quite black and white people, we want to know the truth, and the team in Bristol were phenomenal, the way they delivered the worst, most devastating news you’d ever hear, with compassion but in a way that Craig and I needed to know and hear.”
Subsequent investigations including an MRI scan confirmed what they already feared, that there was nothing more that could be done and Margot had very little time left.
“Our private room was near the midwifery centre and we were constantly seeing new parents come and go with their babies. That was hard, I’d break down in tears most days because you could hear other babies crying and mums coming in to breastfeed their babies in NICU.”
In those final few hours, the couple’s immediate family was allowed to come in to say goodbye to Margot, and a friend of Laura’s who is a minister said a blessing, which was recorded by her brother.
“Then I sat and cuddled her until her body started shutting down and it was time to remove her breathing apparatus,” said Laura. “It took another hour and a half; she did go on breathing in my arms for an hour and a half, with Craig and me cuddling her.
“When she had gone, we bathed her and put her in her little forever outfit, did hand and feet impressions, and took a lock of her hair as she was born with a full head. One of the nurses in the hospital was a professional photographer and he took some really nice photos of her.
“And then we went home with an empty car seat. That was tough. Getting home is all a bit of a blur really.”
In the early days after Margot’s death, Laura and Craig thought the midwives had done everything they could to help us and didn’t realise the catalogue of failings by the trust that led to her death.
Then they were interviewed by the Healthcare Safety Investigation
Branch (HSIB) which investigates every neo-natal baby death, and when the report came in six months later the shocked couple suddenly realised the extent of how seriously they had been failed.
Although Laura now knows the death of her daughter was not her fault, she says she still lives with a personal guilt that, if she had chosen to go to Gloucester from the start, Margot would still be alive today. “I know that’s not my fault, my brain knows that, but my heart doesn’t and it’s something that I now carry with me.
“For Craig, being in the Royal Marines they are trained to think and act completely differently from the rest of us. He’s done three tours, including Afghanistan and North Africa, seen a lot and has been in the military for 15 years so the way he has dealt with this has been completely different from myself.
“At times that was very difficult, and I understand how that can break some relationships but fortunately for us we always communicated even through difficult conversations; we’ve supported each other, respected each other’s views of things. If we can get through this, we can get through anything in life, because this is the toughest thing ever.”
Since Margot’s death, the trust has introduced a new risk assessment procedure into Gloucestershire’s midwifery team, so that expectant mums can make an informed decision about where the safest place for them to give birth is.
“Never in a million years did I think I would not come home with my baby, and I think there needs to be some difficult conversations that midwives need to have with expectant parents, not to scaremonger, but to educate and prepare and talk thought what could happen.
“Life isn’t like a movie; you don’t just go in and poof! you’re pregnant, poof! you have your baby, poof! you go home; life is tough and it’s real and I think midwives need to broaden their conversations to prepare parents for all eventualities.”
By talking about their experience, Laura hopes to raise awareness in the hopes that others will not have to go through what she has and to turn their negative experience into a positive one.
She has raised money for the Petals baby loss charity, through which she has also had counselling, and she has expressed an interest in working with the NHS Trust to “be part of the bigger conversation around midwifery, maybe educating or leaving a legacy behind in Margot’s name. I need to do that for Margot and to help other people”.
After Margot’s death, Laura and Craig got a French bulldog puppy they called Jager, who Laura says has been her saving grace when things have become too much to bear.
“I needed to nurture something and he’s been my little lifeline. He’s got me out of bed when I didn’t want to get up, helped me when Craig has been posted away for his job.”
The couple hope one day to have their rainbow baby - a child you have after baby loss that is your rainbow after your storm.
“That will hopefully come when the time is right and we can draw a line under all this and move on to the next stage of our grief,” said Laura.