She was 4 months pregnant and learned that her baby had died in her womb. Then it only got worse. It is difficult to mourn when you have never seen your baby and when the administration does not recognize him. The mom gave a phone interview to Why Doctor.
The drama dates back to October 3. A 29-year-old pregnant woman learns from an ultrasound that her baby is stillborn. The young woman was admitted to Jacques-Monod hospital, 3 days later, on October 6, in Le Havre to induce childbirth. Why Doctor was able to contact the young woman at her request to clarify the facts and her requests.
The midwife has flushed the toilet
Under the effect of the treatments in use, it suddenly loses water and, without supervision and without experience (this is a 1time pregnancy), she rushes to the bathroom. She loses a lot of blood there and calls the midwife… who just flushes the toilet!
Three days of repeated stimulation followed in the hospital, with no more results than increased bleeding. On October 10, one of the doctors decides to do a curettage to find that there are residues of the placenta but that there is no more baby. Then comes an infection as a bonus … You wouldn’t believe yourself in the 21st century or in France.
The law is badly made
The story does not end there. Far from being supported in the hospital’s “perinatal bereavement program”, she has to fend for herself to declare the death of her child.
But the administration is very rigorous: no birth certificate, so no death certificate. But why is there no birth certificate? Because motherhood, after all its mistakes, refuses to deliver one since it has not given birth …
However, the young woman who was normally monitored, with all the necessary ultrasounds attesting to a pregnancy, will learn 10 days later that the analyzes of the final curettage revealed that she was pregnant with a little girl. She was unfortunately suffering from a genetic anomaly, a trisomy 18, at the origin of the death in utero. Again, she only learned it verbally. Still no paper and still no possibility of registering her stillborn baby on the family record book… and of mourning.
Simply recognize pregnancy
The head of the maternity ward has never seen such a collection of errors and, by his own admission, “does not know what to say”.
The young mother just wanted to see her child but was refused. She suspects the midwife who flushed the toilet of having somehow thrown out her baby.
She is not looking for damages. By her courageous and poignant testimony, when we called her, she only asked for 2 things.
First, that the inhuman treatment inflicted on her at the maternity hospital in Le Havre cannot be inflicted on another young mother. Second, that the birth certificate be drawn up as quickly as possible, or that the administration of civil status does not need to register the death and finally register the child in the family record book.
In order to move this delicate issue forward, the bereaved mother appealed to the Minister of Health, as well as to the First Lady, to force the hospital to recognize its mistakes and thus mourn. The editorial staff of Why Doctor, as a whole, is revolted by this monstrous treatment inflicted on an abused and grieving young mother.
We do not know who from the hospital, the administration or the Ministry of Health will be the first to repair these cascading errors, but we support this young woman in her approach.
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