Posted on 09/05/2009 3:04:30 AM PDT by Brugmansian
The Perth hospital in which a woman gave birth to a stillborn baby without staff noticing has defended its level of care.
Sharon May was in an induced coma in intensive care while being treated for pneumonia and swine flu at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.
Mrs May was 24 weeks' pregnant, when last month while still in a coma she gave birth to a stillborn boy
(Excerpt) Read more at abc.net.au ...
“The Perth hospital in which a woman gave birth to a stillborn baby without staff noticing has defended its level of care.”
They may provide good care, but we don’t know in this case because they obviously didn’t provide any to her.
probably hoped she would die so they could open the bed up for someone waiting out in the hall.
Good ol’ socialized medicine. Ain’t it great?
No, they knew she was pregnant and did everything that the obstetrician recommended. A nurse found the baby boy in the bed with the mom when she went to check on her.
Coma or not, a woman’s body moves significantly to give birth. How long did they leave her alone? It would seem that in ICU, one should be checked on regularly. Her body gave birth while the nurses had their backs turned.
The article is lacking on those details. Someone in an induced coma in an ICU however you would think would be monitored closely. Wouldn’t the monitors have alerted the staff if no one was in the room for hours?
Twenty-four weeks pregnant at that.
Certainly enough to be showing under normal circumstances.
No, I got that information from the article. It’s in there.
Anyway, she was about 6 months pregnant. She was certainly showing. A 24 week old fetus is about a foot long and weighs about 1.5 pounds.
The mother’s cervix had to have dilated enough to pass the baby through without the mother’s active pushing. Think about that.
How long did those nurses ignore this woman in ICU for her cervix to dilate wide enough to give birth?
I can agree with you that sometimes babies are miscarried with no impending warning. However, this woman gave birth. That means her cervix had to dilate wide enough to pass a foot long, one and a half pound baby through. Since she was in a coma, she wasn’t actively pushing. Her body’s contractions should have alerted the nurses. They failed.
Since the lady was in an induced coma maybe she gave no outward signs of labor. She would be very relaxed. I feel bad for her when and if she wakes up.
ICU in a coma. Where were the monitors that would have recorded respiration and heartbeat and alerted to any changes?
Our friend’s child was in an induced coma last Spring and she was hooked up to all sorts of monitors.
Technically at that point it is still called a miscarriage—losing a baby after that point is a stillbirth.
When I went into labor with my twins, I didn’t have ANY contractions, just went in to the hospital as a precaution because I seemed to be leaking a tiny bit of fluid...turns out by the time I got there, they said my water had started to break on my daughter’s sac, and she was already at a 5 and the nurse could feel her head! (They deliver at a 10.) The monitor wasn’t showing contractions, and it was a good thing we got to the hospital when we did because I had to have a c-section for my son who was jammed sideways high up in my ribs area. Again, IMO, until we hear from the investigators that yes, the medical staff screwed up, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt since this was the ICU. If the investigators find there was negligence, then I will be the first to cast aspersions on the nurses and doctors there.
As I understand it, miscarriage is 20 weeks and before and stillbirth is 20 weeks and after. The article says she gave birth to a stillborn at 24 weeks.
I’ve certainly heard of women going into labor without knowing it so I’m not questioning your experience. I simply find it nearly impossible to believe that a woman in ICU with all of those monitors could give birth to a stillborn without anything alerting the nursing staff. It just seems like outright neglect.
You’re right about the m/c, s/b dates, my bad.
However, we don’t know if the baby was average sized, etc. Could have had birth defects, etc. The mother could have had an incompetent uterus, there’s a lot of things that can unfortunately go wrong with a pregnancy, and a lot of them are unpredictable and unpreventable.
Still quite a sad story when a baby dies, whether it was ‘natural’ or neglect. :*( We just had a story here in TX a few weeks ago about a 19 year old mother who was 4 months pregnant—she was struck by lightning which immediately killed her baby and fried her brain—they pulled the plug on her last weekend. :*(
Yes, certainly we don’t know the details surrounding the pregnancy. I hope we find out.
I found an article that says:
“Staff from another hospital reportedly told him his child had a good chance of survival if born prematurely.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/06/2677717.htm
So I’m thinking the baby was in good shape, but we’ll find out more I’m sure. It’s just so sad and makes me so angry.
Unnoticed? What - it happened in mere minutes? I guess it can happen just like that, and they can defend their standard of care, but her family must be left wondering...
For some people, fortunately not as many, this is very much like the H1N1 of 1918. A ten year old boy in Alaska was sent home by the school nurse last Thursday around noon. Friday night he died in the hospital. 36 hours from first symptoms to death. That is the progression John Barry wrote about in "The Great Influenza - The Epic Story Of The Deadliest Plague In History."
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