“30 Hospital Blunders Lead to Death of Newborn”
By Danell Swim
April 19, 2008
A damning report by the Health Service Ombudsman for England condemns as “indefensible” the way Mrs Callaway’s labour was managed.
The report states that a drug used to speed the labour should have been stopped when the CTG showed signs that the baby was being deprived of oxygen.
Instead, staff doubled the dose of Syntocinon, a synthetic version of the hormone which controls contractions.
The report concludes that the baby should have been delivered by caesarean section four hours earlier than his eventual birth - at 3.32pm - but “a system failure” meant the warning signs were not spotted.
An independent expert quoted by the Ombudsman said: “It is difficult to avoid the clear conclusion that the most important test of fetal wellbeing - the CTG - was actually giving all the clues it needed to about the fetal condition but that this was simply not recognised by those looking after Mrs Callaway.”
A caesarean delivery before 10.50am would probably have been associated with a “good outcome”, he said, adding: “‘I would have expected the registrar, other doctor or a midwife to have appreciated the deterioration in this baby’s condition in labour.”
The shocking truth about Alwyn’s death has taken almost four years to emerge but the Callaways have always been determined eventually to expose the appalling catalogue of errors which cost his life.
But Alwyn was finished by then. His heartbeat was dying out.
“They tried to get him out five times with a suction cap and when they finally pulled him out with forceps he was just plonked on my chest and I shouted to William, ‘He’s dead! He’s dead!’.”
She said the baby had huge gouges on his head from the forceps and was not moving.
A team worked on him for 20 minutes, leaving without a word to the Callaways.
“As far as I was concerned, my baby had been killed by his horrific and brutal delivery.”
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Good thing they were in a hospital with trained professionals who are clearly better equipped to deal with labor and delivery than anybody else.
That’s just horrible. Poor babe.