The horrors of socialized medicine became startlingly clear last week when a newborn infant died in a UK hospital after his mother was forced to give birth to him in the waiting room.
The BBC is reporting that when Sara Proud of Beaumont Leys went into labor on May 13, she and her partner, Steven Yorke, went to Leicester Royal Infirmary where they were told to wait in a side room with other expectant parents. Less than two hours later, Proud began to give birth while Yorke desperately tried to find help.
“Sarah was screaming ‘The baby’s coming! The baby’s coming! The baby’s here!'” Yorke said. “She is bent over a chair with five strange people in the room that didn’t know us and we didn’t know them and the midwives were trying to rush them out. There was blood and everything going everywhere because there’s no bed or nothing.”
Two midwives came to assist Ms. Proud, but Kyle was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, a common complication that is usually successfully handled in the delivery room. But Ms. Proud wasn’t in a delivery room and by the time the baby was rushed off for emergency care, they were unable to revive him.
Meanwhile, the traumatized mother was left to deliver the placenta in the waiting room and only realized her baby had died when her partner told her what had happened.
“It’s numbing,” Yorke told Sky News. “We’re not sleeping well, we’re not eating well. The slightest thing and we’ll cry. Sara’s not left the house at all. It’s affected the children in a big way. What can you say? They’ve let us down. I actually believe they neglected us – they didn’t give us the care we deserve and that’s purely it.”
The hospital is admitting that mistakes were made and the two midwives who assisted Proud also expressed regret.
Jane Porter, head of midwifery at Leicester’s Hospitals said: “We are sorry and sad about the tragic death of Ms Proud’s son.It’s clear that we should have seen Sara sooner, what’s not clear is whether her baby died during or some time before the birth and only the post mortem will be able to answer that.”
Until the post-mortem is concluded, the family will have to wait before it can be determined if the baby’s death was caused by the hospital’s failure to provide proper care.
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