Lack of Co-ordinated Care

Freedym

Wednesday, January 26th 2011

I lost my baby girl Freedym this year on the 26th January. It was a long and draining pregnancy with a lot of things that I don’t understand and don’t think I ever will.

It all started with having my gall bladder removed and I couldn’t shake the feeling of been sick. I have four other kids so kind of knew that I was pregnant. I took a test and sure enough I was. I went to my GP who then sent me for a scan which said that I had miscarried so went home and started to deal with that only to have a phone call from my doc to say that the blood test they had taken had shown my hormone levels had doubled in a week so I can’t have had a miscarriage. So we went back again for a scan to find out this time that I was still pregnant but had a large haemotoma in my womb which was hiding baby. They then explained to me that there was a chance that I could miscarry and any bleeding or pain to go straight to the hospital, which we did.

At one trip to the hospital they did a scan on baby and found that everything was ok and that she looked to be doing fine. Two days later I went for my 20 week scan to find out that baby had low fluid and that I had placenta previa as well. Many specialist appointments followed with a scan every week and the specialist always telling me there was something new wrong with her and waiting and waiting to be seen by the specialist in Wellington for a scan to see exactly what was going on.

Finally we got to see the specialist in Wellington and found there was nothing at all wrong with baby. It was just the low fluid and placenta previa that was the problem. Next they said to us that I had to keep 2cm of fluid round baby at all timesand to go in to hospital with any pain and bleeding and rest, with the option that we could abort her if we wanted to. But how could I do that – she was my baby she had a heartbeat and they told me there was nothing wrong with her. We had to wait til I was 24 weeks before I had to go back to Wellington and stay there till I had her but in the mean time I had to go for a scan every week and check in with the specialist every week as well. For 4 weeks we went back and forth to the hospital for scans and check ups, with pains, bleeding the lot. Everytime was the same – baby has got a heartbeat, it’s ok, you can go home and wait til you go Wellington. The bit I cant understand is with the last scan I went for the week before we lost her. The scan said that I had no fluid at all round baby so we were expecting to be on our way to Wellington. Instead they sent me home to wait for the next week to go to Wellington which would have been the 27th of January. We didnt make it there.

My baby girl was born on Wednesday, the 26th of January, on the side of the road in an ambulance. She fought for two hours before she couldn’t do it anymore and we lost her. I am grateful that she fought as hard as she did and we gave it all we could. I can just never get why they didn’t send me to Wellington when I had no fluid the week before.

Rebecca