Sarah Robinson said she was “gobsmacked” when medical staff speculated over whether she was a smoker when giving birth to baby Ida, who tragically died at Royal Preston Hospital at just seven days old
A bereaved mum blamed for the death of her own baby says she hopes “no other parents have to suffer in the way that we have”.
Sarah Robinson and Ryan Lock were devastated after losing their baby daughter Ida seven days after she was born. Heavily pregnant Sarah had gone into hospital after her waters broken, and were transferred to another hospital after giving birth.
The parents however were “gobsmacked” when Sarah was accused of having smoked during her pregnancy. The parents, from Morecambe, Lancashire, had gone to the Royal Lancaster Infirmary with Sarah in labour on November 9, 2019.
An inquest into Ida’s death heard that Sarah, who already had a little boy, Ethan, was 40 weeks pregnant when Ida was born and her pregnancy had been “normal and with no concerns”. She planned to have a water birth with Ida and was in labour when “all of a sudden the whole atmosphere changed”, Lancashire Live reports.
A doctor appeared and said “we need to get this baby out” just minutes after the midwives were “calm and joking about the complexities of moving the bed”. Up to this point neither Sarah or Ryan had been told anything about Ida’s heartrate despite it having decreased to 100 beats per minute, they said.
After Ida was born, she was transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit at the Royal Preston Hospital while Sarah was taken into theatre to remove the placenta. “They said the placenta looked gritty and I heard one of them say ‘it looks like someone has smoked’,” Sarah told the coroner. “I was quite gobsmacked. I’ve never smoked in my life. I was just thinking ‘what’s happened?’.”
After Ida’s birth, Sarah and Ryan said they “weren’t given any information as to what went wrong”. Tragically, the youngster died seven days later.
“All contact with the trust was from us. We had to chase to get a de-brief,” Sarah said. The parents later met with with Royal Lancaster managers over a month later, describing their treatment as “incredibly insensitive”.
She told the hearing at Preston’s County Hall how managers did not have any available places to meet and asked “can we have the meeting in one of the delivery suites?”. “It shocked me,” she said. “They told us to meet her in the waiting area where you go for a scan, there were mothers there waiting for scans, and we were there.
“Then she took us to Ward 17 which is where you go when you’ve had a baby. There were babies crying. The message was that Ida was very poorly before she was born. I felt like they were saying I had done something wrong.”
The inquest, due to last 17 days, was ordered by Lancashire’s Senior Coroner Dr James Adeley after he was contacted by medical negligence solicitors representing Ida’s parents after they spent years fighting for answers about their daughter’s birth.
University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, which is being legally represented during the inquest along with the midwives and the Care Quality Commission, later admitted there had been “care delivery issues” during Ida’s birth.
The trust was heavily criticised in 2015 in a report prepared by Dr Bill Kirkup, who stated there was ‘major failure at every level’ in maternity and neonatal services’ between 2004 and 2013, following the deaths of 11 babies and one mother.
Tabetha Darmon, Chief Nursing Officer at UHMBT, said in 2023: “We offer our deepest sympathies and condolences to Ida’s family for the tragic loss of their daughter and sister. We fully appreciate that the inquest will be very emotive and difficult to sit through. The Trust will fully support and assist the Coroner’s investigation to ensure the family receive the answers they deserve.
“The Trust acknowledges that there were care delivery issues in Ida’s care. The fact that she was in difficulty should have been recognised sooner and her birth should have been expedited. The Trust has worked hard to address the learning points highlighted by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) report and has also made wider system and process changes for the benefit and safety of our patients since 2019.”
The inquest had originally been due to start in February last year but was dramatically halted at the eleventh hour after the coroner was contacted by midwife Ian Kemp. Mr Kemp said he had “blown the whistle” at the Care Quality Commission over claims that an inspection report into maternity services at the Royal Lancaster and Barrow’s Furness General Hospital in December 2019 was “watered down”.
Dr Adeley said Mr Kemp’s allegations were “well within the scope of the inquest” and required further investigation as he may not have the “complete factual matrix in dealing with this case”. Lawyers for the Care Quality Commission told the coroner it did not recognise Mr Kemp’s allegations. The inquest continues.
