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T<\/span>he long-awaited report into maternity failures at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS trust (NUH), the largest investigation of its kind involving about 2,500 families, will be published later this week.<\/p>\n Led by the senior midwife Donna Ockenden, the inquiry investigated stillbirths, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and babies or mothers who suffered brain damage and other injuries between 2012 and 2025.<\/p>\n It follows a decade-long campaign for justice and change by the families affected. Some share their stories about what happened to them in Nottingham, and explain why this is such a landmark moment.<\/p>\n Wynter died in 2019 at the <\/em>Queen\u2019s Medical Centre<\/em> (QMC) from <\/em>hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy<\/em> \u2013 a loss of oxygen flow to the brain \u2013 which could have been prevented had staff delivered her earlier.<\/em><\/p>\n Wynter\u2019s mother, Sarah Andrews, said: \u201cI went into labour and I was having contractions, and for six days, I was basically told to stay at home. I didn\u2019t feel like I had any other choice. And then in hospital, the care was just beset by failures.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually said to my husband I felt like I\u2019d be better off dead than in the situation I was in \u2026 It was truly horrific. When they eventually called the emergency C-section and opened me up, the smell of infection filled the room and that\u2019s when they realised that Wynter was stuck in my pelvis. All the warning signs of infection were there.<\/p>\n <\/span>Sarah and Gary Andrews.<\/span> Photograph: Fabio De Paola\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cMe and Gary had to watch for 23 minutes while they failed to resuscitate her. We had staff come visit us in the bereavement suite and they said it was one of those things, that sometimes babies die. One said to us: \u2018If we listen to every mother\u2019s concerns, we\u2019d be overrun.\u2019 They\u2019re telling us that they can\u2019t see anything that\u2019s gone wrong. And a year later, at the inquest, the coroner rules that it\u2019s a clear and obvious case of neglect.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a lifetime of growing up without our daughter. When the cameras stop rolling, when the media goes home, we\u2019re still traumatised people. We continue to live this every day. We\u2019ll never be the same people we were before.<\/p>\n \u201cThis report is going to be very traumatic for families but I think it\u2019s important that what happened in Nottingham is laid out so that we can ensure those failures aren\u2019t repeated again.\u201d<\/p>\n Felicity had an emergency hysterectomy at QMC after giving birth in 2015 when she was 29, during which medics accidentally removed her bladder, leaving her with a<\/em> urostomy <\/em>bag.<\/em><\/p>\n Felicity said: \u201cI had a difficult pregnancy, I was in hospital for weeks. I had a planned C-section and was told that since it was such a high-risk case, a multi-disciplinary team would be involved. But that never happened. They actually let a student doctor do it, despite it being the highest risk C-section they\u2019d had in years. They took out my bladder without even realising. The whole thing.<\/p>\n <\/span>Felicity Benyon in hospital with her newborn son in 2015. <\/span> Photograph: Felicity Benyon<\/p>\n \u201cOriginally they said the placenta accreta [a serious pregnancy condition where the placenta attaches too deeply into the uterine wall] had completely enveloped the bladder. Initially, I was just so happy my baby was alive, so happy that I\u2019d survived because they made me think they had saved the day.<\/p>\n \u201cBut then they instigated an investigation, which found the accreta had not touched the bladder and it was completely healthy. I was absolutely floored. It should have just been a hysterectomy and then home, instead of living with lifelong complications.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s completely taken my trust away. I have regular hospital appointments because I now live with this disability, and it\u2019s horrific because I don\u2019t feel like I can trust doctors. I don\u2019t feel safe in hospitals. But that\u2019s the place you\u2019re supposed to feel safe because it\u2019s where you\u2019re at your most vulnerable.<\/p>\n \u201cThis review is a huge moment because we\u2019ve fought for years to get this. Going into a pregnancy there\u2019s a risk, but we\u2019re talking about things that were preventable. Things that should never have happened. Things where there\u2019s actually already a system in place to stop them from happening, but it\u2019s just not being adhered to.\u201d<\/p>\n Caitlin was born prematurely in 2021 at Nottingham City <\/em>hospital and at 30 days<\/em>developed <\/em>necroti<\/em>sing enterocolitis <\/em>(NEC), a severe, life-threatening gastrointestinal emergency. Her parents allege the failure of staff to treat her quickly led her to collapse<\/em> and suffer a severe brain injury.<\/em><\/p>\n Caitlin\u2019s mother, Emily Stringer, said: \u201cCaitlin did really well initially, and got off the ventilator really quickly. But we\u2019d been having concerns for few days. We\u2019d been taking photos and showing them to staff of Caitlin\u2019s abdomen getting bigger and bigger, and she wasn\u2019t tolerating her feeds. She was struggling with her breathing and becoming increasingly lethargic. These are all red flag signs of NEC.<\/p>\n <\/span>Caitlin Stringer with her parents. \u201cBut staff had an answer for everything. They addressed all of our concerns in isolation. No one was either able or willing to join the big picture together, take a step back and think, no, these parents are right, this is a deteriorating baby.<\/p>\n \u201cShe collapsed and needed to be put on to a ventilator. The next day her condition worsened. She ended up having over half of her bowel removed because it had ruptured and died inside of her. About a month later, she had a brain scan which showed a devastating injury.<\/p>\n \u201cThe trust commissioned an external review and found an X-ray had been taken about 15 hours before Caitlin collapsed, which diagnosed NEC, and she should have been given antibiotics within an hour \u2013 but she wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cNow she\u2019s expected to die in childhood. She has cerebral palsy and has had multiple respiratory arrests at home. She was in paediatric intensive care 13 times last year. We know that one day one of these will be fatal. It\u2019s horrendous.<\/p>\n \u201cThis review feels like the validation that I never wanted. It\u2019s great that people will understand the truth, the scale of what\u2019s happened to thousands of families in Nottingham, but heartbreaking that they have to. Things that you think are unthinkable, that you think are ludicrous, they can\u2019t possibly do that \u2013 well, we know that they have.\u201d<\/p>\n Quinn died at Nottingham City <\/em>hospital 36 hours after <\/em>his birth in<\/em> 2021<\/em>. His mother, Emmie Studencki, went to hospital four times with bleeding in the late stages of her pregnancy and said her requests for a caesarean section were ignored.<\/em><\/p>\n Quinn\u2019s father, Ryan Parker, said: \u201cI know it\u2019s very cliche, but you do think you\u2019re in the best place at the time. Emmie had bled a lot, and in hospital we had a feeling that something wasn\u2019t right. What is really happening is Quinn is just slowly dying but no one\u2019s doing anything.<\/p>\n <\/span>Quinn Parker with his parents at Nottingham City hospital in 2021.<\/span> Photograph: Ryan Parker<\/p>\n \u201cEventually a doctor decided to break her waters and I just remember the whole bed was covered in blood and liquid. People came flying in and tried to scan for Quinn\u2019s heart, and Emmie was stretchered out. I didn\u2019t know if either of them were alive. Eventually a midwife told me that Quinn was OK and Emmie was in recovery, but then 90 minutes later a neonatal consultant appeared and told me Quinn actually had brain damage.<\/p>\n \u201cWe later found out that paramedics had noted all of the concerns about rigid abdomen and blood loss of over a litre, and the notes were not collected properly by the hospital.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Ockenden review doesn\u2019t feel like the end of a journey, it feels like a significant landmark moment which should result in more attention and a fundamental appreciation of how dire some maternity care in this country is. Ultimately you want to ensure other places aren\u2019t a Nottingham, but the reality of the situation is other places are already Nottinghams.\u201d<\/p>\n Harriet was stillborn at Nottingham City <\/em>hospital in April 2016 after her mother <\/em>had been in labour for six days.<\/em> An external review of the case found 13 failures and concluded the death was <\/em>almost certainly preventable.<\/em><\/p>\n Her mother, Sarah Hawkins, said: \u201cYou hope that you\u2019re going to be the only person that\u2019s been through this, but when you hear of other people, and it\u2019s not just one or two, it\u2019s hundreds and thousands. You just lose your faith in the NHS.<\/p>\n <\/span>Sarah Hawkins preparing for Harriet\u2019s arrival in 2016. <\/span> Photograph: Sarah and Jack Hawkins<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was eventually brought in, Harriet\u2019s head was coming out of me. For three years, they tried to tell us it was an infection. We had to wait two years to have Harriet\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n \u201cFor so long in Nottingham we were made to feel like the mad grieving parents. Harriet should have been a serious incident within 48 hours, and it took us 159 days to actually get an incident logged. It just felt like a complete cover-up.<\/p>\n \u201cQuite a lot of people focus on statistics, and that\u2019s fine. But you\u2019ve got to think we drove home with an empty car seat, we had to empty our nursery, I gave birth so I still had leaky boobs and hair loss, you have everything. It\u2019s not just an intrapartum death, it\u2019s someone\u2019s baby.<\/p>\n \u201cThe massive thing for me [with the Ockenden report] will be the feeling of eventually being heard and listened to. It took over 10 years. Loads and loads of families were referred to as tragic, isolated cases which clearly wasn\u2019t the case.\u201d<\/p>\n The NUH chief executive, Anthony May, said: \u201cI want to pay tribute to the bravery of the many families who have worked tirelessly to get answers and to make maternity services safer for others.<\/p>\n \u201cI have met some of the affected families, and they have shared their painful and life-changing experiences with me, for which I am very grateful. I am very sorry for the pain and suffering these families have endured.\u201d<\/p>\n He said NUH staff had \u201cshown their commitment to change\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cUpon receiving the findings of the review, we will consider carefully what we need to do next to ensure that we learn from what happened in the past and to continue to improve maternity services,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The long-awaited report into maternity failures at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS trust (NUH), the largest investigation of its kind involving about 2,500 families, will be published later this week. Led by the senior midwife Donna Ockenden, the inquiry investigated stillbirths, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and babies or mothers who suffered brain damage and other injuries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[7998,4370,1398,1229,364,2963,1623],"class_list":{"0":"post-50561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-affected","9":"tag-horrific","10":"tag-maternity","11":"tag-nhs","12":"tag-people","13":"tag-scandal","14":"tag-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Wynter Andrews<\/h2>\n
Felicity Benyon<\/h2>\n
Caitlin Stringer<\/h2>\n
<\/span> Photograph: Emily Stringer<\/p>\nQuinn Parker<\/h2>\n
Harriet Hawkins<\/h2>\n