"My boy would have been 16. That hospital failed me from start to finish."

A mother's experience of Oxford University Hospitals Maternity Services in 2009:

JR Hospital failed to notice severe abnormalities with my baby boy at 12 week scan. At my 20 week scan they turned the monitor away and 4 doctors came in to study the screen.

Eventually they told my my baby had trisomy or Edwards syndrome. A week later they told me he didn't have this, and it was likely spina bifida. They told me he would have no quality of life and I would need to have a late termination.

They never told me that they would be sticking a needle through my stomach into my baby's heart.

The consultant who did this kept missing. They took 5 attempts before it was done.

They told me I would have to give birth to him in a private room. They gave me all the drugs to induce yet nothing happened. I was vomiting, I had diarrhoea for 2 days before they read my notes and realised I'd had laser treatment on my cervix a few years ago.

A horrible heartless female consultant tried to prise my cervix open with her fingers. I felt assaulted. I screamed and screamed in pain until a nurse told her to stop. She was so angry and said to me "well you'll have to give birth with all the other mothers because you need an epidural" I was distraught.

They took me down to the delivery suite and administered the epidural. Again, she assaulted me roughly prising open my cervix. Then she left.

A few hours later I was in agony with contractions. The epidural had fallen out my back. They told me I couldn't have any pain relief apart from gas and air. When my baby was finally born, the midwife said to me " Why has he got all these puncture marks on his chest" She didn't know what I'd been through or that I'd had a traumatic late termination.  I had to explain.

There was no sympathy no kindness she just looked at me and left me. She then came back and stuck a needle in my leg. I didn't know at the time but this was so I could pass the placenta. I was treated like an inconvenience.

I asked could I have my baby's footprints. He was a boy. She replied "oh they'll have to be pink because we've no blue" Just matter of fact.

She took him away and I was left for so long I got out of bed. I fell flat on the floor on my knees. I was still having effects from the epidural even though it had fell out. No one thought to check me. I was on the floor a while until she came back and shouted at me for getting out of bed.

This gave me ptsd. This was a horrific 3 day ordeal that I cannot put out my mind. I have not since been able to have children and this haunts me.

The staff were cold, heartless. They hadn't communicated.  They didn't look after me I was a hindrance, a nuisance. 

My boy would have been 16. That hospital failed me from start to finish.