A 26-year-old mother has called for new guidelines after her unborn child was strangled by the umbilical cord as her baby was allowed to go three weeks overdue.
Georgina Hardy and her 26-year-old boyfriend, Dave Squire, were so excited to meet their daughter.
Unfortunately, baby Rosie Melanie Joyce Squire was stillborn after the umbilical cord strangled her when she had grown too big.
Ms. Hardy launched a petition to change protocol that allows pregnant women to carry their babies more than 40 weeks.
She is 15 weeks pregnant but said it was hard for them to celebrate as they were very anxious.
“She was allowed to grow too big and was slowly strangled,” she told Metro Online.
“You get to the 38 week mark and think, “I’ve made it, it’s just a waiting game now”, waiting for the baby to be here.
“We never for one second thought we wouldn’t have a baby at the end of it. Everyone is very aware of the risk of miscarriage at the beginning of a pregnancy, we all know that those first 12 weeks are high risk, yet no-one ever speaks about there being risks at the end of the pregnancy too.”
Pregnancy usually lasts between 37 and 42 weeks. When it goes over 40 weeks, mothers should be given a choice whether they wish to trigger labor or continue pregnancy.
Most women can safely go over the due date but research has revealed mothers who go over 40 weeks are at an increased risk of neonatal death and stillbirth.
Induction is offered to mothers who do not go into labor by 42 weeks.
When Ms. Hardy was 39 weeks pregnant, a test showed her baby had stopped moving. Doctors detected movement after another visit and she was told to go home.
But at 41 weeks, they were told that their daughter had passed away and she was induced to give birth to her baby.
She didn’t know what she could have possibly done wrong during what seemed a ‘perfect’ pregnancy but then found out that carrying a baby past 40 weeks carry a lot of risks.
Ms. Hardy believes she would already have had a healthy baby if she was induced labor at 39 weeks.
Catherine Morgan, the chief nurse at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Our top priority is to provide safe, high quality, compassionate health services to the patients we care for every day at the Trust.
“We have carried out a full investigation into what happened after the very sad stillbirth of Miss Hardy’s baby and we express our sincerest condolences to her and her family. We will be meeting with her next week to talk through the findings of that review.
“Patient safety and the delivery of high quality care is very important to us and we strive to continually improve, so we take any lessons learned from our investigations forward to better our services.”
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Replaced!