"she looked around the room then looked at me and said “where is your baby” I had to then explain my daughter had died"

A mother’s experience of Oxford University Hospitals Maternity Services in 2010:

When I was 28 weeks pregnant, I went to hospital having not felt my daughter kick for 3 days. Up till that point there had been no issues during the pregnancy and scans all appeared normal.

When I arrived at the hospital, they took me in and used the Doppler to listen to the heartbeat. The midwife listened for less than a minute, told me it was fine and nothing to worry about. I left the hospital and my community midwife called me the next day, I explained what happened and she stated they should have put me on a monitor to review. I felt like because I was only 22 with no high risk factors I wasn’t seen as a concern.

The following day I returned to hospital having still not felt the baby kick. This time they could not find her heartbeat, so they scanned me. I knew from the look on the midwife’s face what she was about to say. I can’t even begin to describe the pain I felt at that moment. To be told my daughter had died.

I was moved to the bereavement suite where they were fantastic and looked after me well.

After I had given birth, my placenta didn’t come away and so I had to have a manual removal. As I had been given an epidural for this I had to be monitored, so I was then moved to the delivery ward. I was given a private room but the nurses insisted that the door be left open. I had to lie there listening to all the newborns crying and it broke my heart. My mum argued with them and made them close the door conscious of the impact this was having on me.

Once the epidural had worn off I couldn’t go back to bereavement suite due to staff shortages so I was taken to Sliver Star. At one point a midwife came in the room to check my obs, she looked around the room then looked at me and said “where is your baby” I had to then explain my daughter had died, they hadn’t bothered to communicate that there was a woman on the ward who had had a stillbirth.

Losing a child never leaves you, you learn to live with it but the pain doesn’t go.

However, I have also had to have that feeling that had they listen to me on my first attendance had they done the correct checks there may have been a chance to save my child and prevent her death.