"The care I received was reckless in places and certainly heartless...I had a lot of trouble getting hold of my notes afterwards"

A mother’s experience of Oxford University Hospitals Maternity Services in 2006-2007:

This is a very brief high level account, my husband has a better recollection of all the details and my medical notes. I was sent to OHU at 20 weeks following a placenta abruption at 12 weeks as by now my waters had broken just after the 20 week scan.

After being sent up for a scan at OHU with [female consultant's name], who didn't look up from the scanner before saying "this problem shouldn't be here, it should have been got rid of weeks ago". I was kept admitted into hospital for monitoring on the top floor on the archaic women's centre (the complex pregnancy ward).

After many terrifying emergencies and near misses, where even the midwives were scared of how dangerous the pregnancy had become, I finally went into spontaneous labour at 19.5 weeks. [Son’s name] was born alive and was whisked off for care in the NICU. Everyone left the room. I hadn't delivered the placenta it was trapped half in half out, it had become very unstable and degraded due to the abruption.

My husband and I were left alone in the delivery suite to take in what had just happened for at least an hour maybe longer. I began to feel very unwell, the only way I can describe it is like I was slipping away and paper thing. I could feel a lot of wetness underneath me and so my husband looked under the sheet to see a lot of blood, he hit the emergency button. A number of staff came running back in, said we need to do a d and c to get the placenta out. They left briefly to get this set up.

When they came back, they said there was no anaesthetist available, and no time to wait, so they would have to do a manual extraction here using the gas and air. Told me to breath hard and did it. Instead of weighing the mat underneath me to determine how much blood I had lost, they just held it up in their hands and said to each other ‘I think that feels like just under a litre to me; so you don't need a blood transfusion’. I don't think anyone was free to do it anyway so they left again.

I received no additional blood and consequently felt really unwell. I also passed more placenta in the toilet over the next day, as it hadn't been as thorough due to the lack of anaesthetic.

My son's care in Nicu was very good. He died the next day.

The care I received was reckless in places and certainly heartless. I wanted to get my medical notes back from them, I had a lot of trouble getting hold of my notes afterwards as they all closed ranks. I believe we met with [male obstetrician's name] during this process, they seemed very guarded, like I had the physical or mental strength to bring any kind of case against them – I just needed to process what had happened and get on with my life (I also had a toddler at home).