Panorama 8-00 pm 3rd May 2007.

I watched with horror as accounts unfolded of several women’s ordeals whilst in labour at different hospitals in England. It reminded me of my own ordeal forty years ago and I found myself quite tearful as I watched and listened to the mothers telling their stories. This part of the N H S is the part into which the most money should be put, no question about it. These are valuable little souls waiting to come into this world, and they do deserve to get the best possible care during their arrival as do their mothers. If a child is damaged, the cost to the NHS for the next however many years is massive.  I could not believe the amount paid out in compensation to parents whose babies were either damaged or had died, enough to fund the salaries of many midwives.

My own story tells of how I was left in labour in full view of the public, being told to behave myself, how they weighed my baby wrongly and took him to a premature baby unit only to tell me after a week that they  thought they had weighed him wrongly and I could have him back on the ward. How I developed a fever and  was told that I had afterbirth left inside me and how I developed septicaemia. After which I had a haemorrhage and several pints of blood. I was treated very badly by the hospital so I have a vested interest in this area of medicine.

My second husband lost a grandson because Eastbourne General could not take his daughter in law in who needed a caesarean section.  By the time he was born he had inhaled faeces. He lived only a day.
This is a national shame.