"I will never forget the trauma of not being listened to for weeks whilst knowing my baby was in trouble"

A mother's experience of Oxford University Hospitals Maternity Services in 2023:

We lost our baby at 20+2 weeks after three weeks of repeated visits to the MAU with bleeding and intense cramping pain, always to be told that there was absolutely nothing to worry about and being sent home each time.

I was always made to feel like a silly worrying first time mum who didn’t understand that pain was part of pregnancy, and I found many of the staff we interacted with were dismissive and not caring at all.

I got increasingly anxious as I knew that something was really wrong as the bleeding was every day and I had even passed some tissue one day whilst waiting to be seen at MAU, which was not followed up on. I was never seen by a consultant on any of the visits or referred for any investigations or scans, and there was no continuity of care despite my repeated visits to MAU and calls to my community midwife.

At our scheduled 20 week scan (as they did not offer one sooner) it was discovered I’d suffered preterm premature rupture of the membranes and there was no amniotic fluid left. A few days later I went into labour and our baby was born sleeping. They discovered at that point that I had an awful infection.

My care from the point of the scan revealing the problem was mostly good, under a consultant, but I will never forget the trauma of not being listened to for weeks whilst knowing my baby was in trouble. It was just awful and has taken a lot of therapy to get back to a good place.

I also find it unforgivable that at no point at any follow up appointment was it mentioned to me that after such an invasive infection during pregnancy, and after manual removal of the placenta, the chance of damage to the fallopian tubes is very high.

I now have both tubes totally blocked, only discovered after 1.5 years of trying to get pregnant again, but every medical professional we meet now says it will be because of what I went through - I could have saved many months had I been told this sooner after the death of our baby. I’ll now never be able to conceive naturally.

I’ll always wonder if they’d treated me better at MAU and taken me seriously if the outcomes would have been very different.