“I taxied home a plastic jar of my baby’s remains, made a space in our fridge, and put the box there,” Lawrence says.
Hours earlier, the couple rushed to the emergency room of University Hospital Lewisham in the United Kingdom after Laura had a miscarriage and a late miscarriage at home.
But the couple were warned to safely hide the fetal remains, they felt their only option was to take the body home.
The agency in charge of the British public health system said it had launched an investigation into the incident, which occurred a few months ago. But the case has raised broader concerns about miscarriage in the UK.
Laura and Lawrence realized something was wrong when Laura started bleeding in her fourth month of pregnancy.
Image: Playback / BBC
They rushed to the maternity ward at Lewisham University Hospital and were told everything was fine as the baby still had a heartbeat.
But days later, after another examination, the doctors confirmed that the baby had died – the baby was still in the womb. Sent home, the couple were instructed to wait for a suitable bed for Laura to deliver the stillborn baby.
Two days later, Laura awoke in excruciating pain. She ran to the bathroom and delivered the baby there.
He said that at first he didn’t understand what was happening. However, when she took the spillage into the toilet, she realized that it was the remains of her baby.
“That’s when I saw it was a man,” she said.
She screamed and ran out of the bathroom in a panic, closing the door and telling her partner, “Don’t come in.”
The couple called 911 but were told the case was “not an emergency”. The couple wrapped their young son’s remains in a damp cloth, put the body in the box, and went to the emergency room.
They say it was “complete chaos” when they arrived.
“We were taken to the general waiting room and told to sit in the back,” Laura said.
“I was crying holding my baby in a tupperware box with 20-30 other people in the waiting room.”
They were then taken to another room where Laura was told she would need surgery to remove the placenta.
All this time, according to the couple, the baby remained in the box, and staff said there was no safe place to hide it.
“No one would even open the box and look at our baby,” Laura said.
“Almost no one seemed to want to admit what was going on. Because if they had figured it out, they would have had to deal with the problem,” Lawrence added.
At midnight the couple decided they had no choice but to take the fetal remains home.
“There was no one in the hospital who wanted to take care of our baby. No one seemed to know what was going on,” Lawrence said.
“Our baby has been in a hot box for almost five hours. That’s why we decided to take her home together.”
They returned home by taxi. “It was a lonely, surreal moment: I made room in my fridge to put the box. It looked so weird,” says Laura.
The NHS (British public health system) said in a statement that it regretted the incident.
“We are deeply saddened and offer our deepest condolences to Ms Brody and her partner for the tragic loss of their baby and these traumatic experiences.”
“Full research is being done to understand where gaps in maintenance occur so that necessary changes and improvements can be made.”
The business said it met with Laura to discuss corrective actions based on her experience with the service.
“This includes establishing a clinic to discuss ongoing support for people who have had miscarriages. We are also reviewing our processes to always provide compassionate and timely support to people who have miscarried and facilitate access to the system.” “The NHS provides healthcare to patients with urgent problems in early pregnancy.”
‘Thrown into Hell’
Laura and Lawrence contacted the BBC after seeing some exclusive reports on low care worldwide. They say they decided to tell their story to ensure that incidents like theirs never happen again.
“When things go wrong during pregnancy, it feels like there’s no safety net,” Laura said. “And even when the whole team and experts are working so hard, the processes are so flawed. We felt like we had been thrown into hell.”
All four UK countries have guidelines on how to best care for women who have had a miscarriage. But for experts, there are concerns that employees do not have the time or training to understand and implement the procedures.
The Department of Health says the new guidelines should help hospitals provide personalized care in cases of miscarriage.
Professor Dame Lesley Regan, a gynecologist and spokesperson for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said late-term abortions are generally rare – it happens once in every 100 pregnancies. Many NHS staff may not know how to respond to emergencies like these, she says.
“I think late-term abortions are much less understood, and some health professionals find it very frightening,” Regan says.
Ruth Bender Atik, president of the Miscarriage Association, described Laura and Lawrence’s case as “unbearable”.
“There must be a cold spot in the emergency room so that these little bodies can be safely, respectfully and carefully stored,” Atik said. Said.
But Zoe Clark-Coates of the Saying Goodbye charity and co-chairman of the Pregnancy Loss Review said similar problems are not uncommon, and some couples have been instructed to hide their babies’ remains over the weekend until hospitals accept them.
Often, women are advised to bring their baby or pregnancy remains with them for tests to try to figure out why the miscarriage occurred.
source: Noticias
