"We feel lied to and betrayed"

A mother's experience of Oxford University Hospitals Maternity Services in 2017:

Our daughter was born in November 2017 after a traumatic emergency c section and a 3 day labour. My body wasn’t progressing and instead of keeping us safe; staff ignored warning signs that things weren’t going well and didn’t advocate for me.

Our daughter’s heart rate became unsafe and then everything happened so quickly and I had an emergency c section. The result of the birth meant that she developed a pneumothorax which is a hole near her lung. This required thankfully only antibiotics and not surgery however we were kept in for approximately 10 days between high dependency and low dependency wards and she was treated throughout the night and day at various times.

Our daughter was born not breathing well and was grey. She was rushed away to be treated without me seeing her, and the aftercare around this was appalling. I was told I wouldn’t be able to see her unless I walked to her. I had no help from staff with this. My husband pushed me in a wheelchair to go and meet our daughter; staff did not help with this; they didn’t even open the doors for us or prepare us for what we might see when I met our daughter. She was covered in wires and tubes and it was just awful. There was no support.

I’ve recently found out that at the time of our daughter’s birth the trust did not support c sections which in my view now has shown that they were willing to risk mine and our daughters lives for the sake of statistics. The hospital pushed and pushed my body to have a natural birth using various drugs which was never going to happen based on my progress. There was no need for it to become an emergency situation.

We feel lied to and betrayed as at the birth after thoughts meeting; I was told that it was a fluke situation and I wouldn’t be given a c section in the future as there is nothing to suggest that I wouldn’t birth naturally next time.

Our daughter was expected to be the only one that we would be lucky to have; as we had had fertility treatment to have her, so when we fell pregnant with our 2nd daughter I immediately asked for a c section. This was made as difficult as possible by the trust and I had to have a video call with the lead midwife at the time to discuss my options. Let’s just say at the end of the call the impression I had was that they were not impressed I hadn’t been convinced to have a natural birth and still wanted a c section. This was granted very reluctantly but we felt throughout the meeting that we were constantly justifying our reasons when clearly my experience says it all.

Our 3rd baby was a miracle and he was born my c section on 2024 and the process for this was smooth however I will never forget the trauma of our first born.

Neither of us deserved what happened to us and I will forever carry the guilt that I didn’t advocate more for myself and our daughter, and that I was so naive and trusting to think that the hospital had my best interests at heart. I’ve learned things that no one should need to know and I’m an astonished that poor care is still happening now. It’s heart breaking and things need to change immediately!