Chelsea Robinson, 19, spent over 48 hours in labour, screaming and begging nurses for help before delivering a dead baby, born with faecal matter in her mouth. The first-time mother spent yesterday crying and asking to hold her baby girl, delivered hours earlier at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope.
Her baby, Asia Marie Small, had died in her stomach before an emergency delivery, after medical staff discovered faeces had entered the womb. Robinson and her family are now demanding answers from the management of the hospital as they fear negligence may have played a part in the baby’s death.
“How did little Asia Marie die? Why wasn’t she allowed to deliver the child earlier? Why did nurses listen to the girl scream in pain for hours and ignore her concerns until it was too late?” asked the baby’s father, Brian Small.
CEO of the North-West Regional Health Authority (NCRHA) Kumar Boodram could not answer these questions when reached late yesterday, but said the family would receive counselling. He said there would be a post mortem tomorrow to determine the cause of the baby’s death.
“I spoke to the medical chief of staff and she will speak to the family members. One of the relatives is an employee so this is very close to us,” Boodram said. Relatives said first they were told Asia Marie was strangled by the umbilical cord. Then, later, they were told the mother may have had diabetes and the baby’s death was related to this.
Robinson spent three days in labour and relatives said she was turned away from the hospital as nurses said she was not ready to give birth. Robinson has not yet accepted her daughter’s death, but her relatives are questioning staff at the hospital over the death they feel could have been prevented.
Small, in an interview with the Guardian yesterday, recalled Robinson complaining of immense pain on Saturday. “We brought her to the hospital. They send her back home because they said she had only opened to one centimetre.
“When she came home the pain was unbearable so she went back the next day. They checked her again and said she was only opened up to three centimetres and wasn’t ready but they kept her.” Small said Robinson called him on his mobile phone on Sunday night and was bawling and crying. He told her to call the nurse and stayed with her on the phone.
“I heard her begging the nurse to do something. She begged for a C-Section and told the nurse she was dying and that her baby was dying.
“The nurse said they wouldn’t deliver the baby.”
Small’s mother who works in the hospital as a cook checked on Robinson several times throughout the day yesterday. She said her daughter-in-law wouldn’t stop bawling because of the pain. She eventually stopped going after a nurse allegedly asked her why she was coming so often and asked if she was “overdoing it.”
Small’s mother sent a friend, who said Robinson had continued crying and begging nurses for help. As the woman continued to cry, nurses sent her for an ultrasound, and when she returned relatives say, they told her there was faecal matter in her stomach.
The nurses assured her they were hearing a heartbeat but said they needed to begin the delivery. Two hours later, another check revealed the absence of the baby’s heartbeat.