Sam Reid and her partner Dale Jones’ son was stillborn following a series of failings by Pontefract Hospital.
Ms Reid had a normal labour and attended the midwife-led unit at the hospital, which does not have an emergency department.
Towards the end of her labour Ms Reid felt that things started to go “disastrously wrong”. Ms Reid told the BBC: “I was given the wrong drugs at the wrong time and they never monitored me through my labour.”
When midwives called for an ambulance the line wasn’t connected correctly and the closest ambulance was 14 miles away and it took paramedics 23 minutes to get to the unit. In addition to this they got lost on their way to the hospital with Ms Reid.
The catalogue of mistakes included the failure to monitor the baby’s heartbeat, due to broken equipment at the unit.
Mid Yorkshire Hospital NHS Trust admitted liability and have apologised to the couple.
A letter from the Trust to Ms Reid said: “The Trust accepts that the care that the claimant received was below the level to which she was entitled to expect. The trust admits that, but for its failing, the tragic stillbirth of the claimant’s baby would have been avoided.”
Gill Pownall, the trust’s head of nursing and midwifery, told the BBC: “On behalf of the trust I offer them our unreserved apology.”
“We took the car seat to hospital thinking we’re going to come home with a baby in that car seat and we never did. That’s the hardest part but it shouldn’t have happened”, said Ms Reid.
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