Baby Loss

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

I am deeply honoured to participate in this debate on an issue that could not be closer to my heart, and I am grateful to the cross-party group on baby loss for bringing this forward.

As we have heard, the loss of a baby is what every parent dreads. Those to whom it occurs are irrevocably changed for ever—their lives scarred by unspeakable tragedy. A year before I was elected, I had no notion that I would ever have the honour of being elected to represent the good people of North Ayrshire and Arran, but here I am, and because of my own horrific experience of stillbirth I feel profoundly that I should use that experience to help shine a light on this issue, which truly is the last taboo.

For too long, too many of those to whom this has happened understandably did not feel equal to the task of speaking out about this issue, and in turn those who have no direct experience of this issue simply do not know how to broach it and are often surprised to find out how prevalent stillbirth is across the UK. Around 3,500 babies each year across the UK are stillborn and another 3,000 die shortly after birth. To put this into context, that is around one baby every hour and a half, the equivalent of 16 jumbo jets crashing every year. It is inconceivable that this should continue. But it will, unless we remove the taboo and shine a light on this awful, awful phenomenon and do all we can for all the mums and dads of the future and all the babies yet to be born. It is sobering to think that in the course of this debate, somewhere in the UK two more little babies will have died, and two families will have been destroyed. It does not bear thinking about, but think about it we must. Yes, it is extremely difficult to talk about this, but we have a duty to all the babies who have been lost and a duty to all the bereaved parents who are struggling to put the pieces of their lives back together.

The fact is that, in Scotland, 34% of stillbirths are babies at the full term of pregnancy, and in England the figure is 33%. This is shocking, since medics at all levels will say that, barring some terrible freak accident, no baby who has survived a full pregnancy need die—not if proper monitoring and procedures are in place—yet such babies do die. In Scotland, some progress has been made in recent years to reduce the incidence of stillbirth, but we still do not compare favourably with our European neighbours. Across the UK, we still have a long way to go.

I know, as many others do, the horror of losing a baby. My baby, Kenneth, would have been seven years old this Saturday, the very day when we reach the culmination of Baby Loss Awareness Week—international pregnancy and infant loss awareness day—when we will see a wave of light for all our babies.

When children lose their parents, they are called orphans. When a husband loses his wife, he is called a widower. When a wife loses her husband, she is called a widow. When parents lose their child, there is no name for that. The reason that there is no name for it is that there are no words. It goes against nature. And in other loss of loved ones, all those who knew and loved them can share memories such as the last holiday, the last Christmas or the last important family milestone, but it is not like that with a stillbirth, so people understandably do not know what to say. How on earth could they? Sometimes, people are so keen to avoid saying the wrong thing that they say nothing at all. I have heard reports of women after a stillbirth seeing their neighbours cross the road to avoid speaking to them, such is the discomfort and anxiety about saying the wrong thing, because there is no right thing to say. There simply are no words; just a deafening silence and a terrible sense of being utterly isolated in consuming grief.

Like so many parents who have lost their babies, my husband and I are haunted by the loss of how we expected our lives to be after five years of fertility treatment. We are haunted by the potential wiped away so cruelly, so suddenly and so unexpectedly; haunted by the fact that it was completely avoidable; haunted by the fact that all this grief and sense of waste was because the Southern general hospital in Glasgow, now called the Queen Elizabeth university hospital, made a series of basic errors; haunted by the fact that that same hospital pulled the shutters down and for six and a half years refused to recognise that any mistakes were made at all and to this day has still not done so; and haunted by the fact that that same hospital, despite independent experts flatly contradicting it, insists that it did nothing wrong.

And this matters. It matters because this is an all too common story and demonstrates an unwillingness openly to engage in a learning process when mistakes are made. That shows the real culture—a fear even—of improvement if people cannot accept it when mistakes are made. How many parents must go through this horrific ordeal only to feel swept aside, ignored, dismissed and told, “It’s just one of those things,” as they try somehow to cope with the crushing weight of grief?

As we have heard already, bereavement care for parents is simply not good enough. Sands has done very important work in this field, and I want today to pay tribute to it. It understands the importance of listening to mothers’ concerns. It found that 45% of the mothers it surveyed who had undergone a stillbirth felt something was wrong before any problems were diagnosed, yet too many of those women were told that their concerns were unfounded and sent home, only for their babies to die shortly afterwards. Antenatal care must be a collaborative process. Mothers’ concerns must be paid attention to. Women know their own bodies.

We must have better monitoring of pregnancies, particularly those of women at risk of experiencing a stillbirth or neonatal death. The truth is that we are failing to identify many babies at risk. In addition, we must have more knowledge, data and research to help us to tackle this issue. The more we know about why our babies are dying, the more measures we can take to militate against it happening. It is very important that if mistakes are made—and remember that one in three stillbirths are at full-term babies—health boards and trusts should not investigate themselves. For investigations to be credible, they must be independent and carried out by people outside the situation. That is the right and proper thing to do to challenge the culture of secrecy.

Where it is believed to be merited, we should allow coroners in England to investigate stillbirths, so that errors in care can be addressed, where they have occurred. In Scotland, the equivalent would be a fatal accident inquiry. These are not straightforward or easy asks, but such an investment now will increasingly mean that, as expertise grows and intelligence is gathered, the need for such measures will necessarily decrease over time.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that local authorities need to take into account the registration of deaths? I have heard of cases where people have had to register deaths at the same place where people were registering births. That is most upsetting for those parents.

[Patricia Gibson]

Indeed. I take on board what the hon. Gentleman says. It is an extremely traumatic experience to register the death at the same place where people are registering births. That simply makes the experience much more traumatic.

In my own case, my notes recorded that I was asked if I wanted a post mortem performed on my son. My notes did not record who asked me this question, what information I was given, or when I was asked it. I was so drowsy on morphine in intensive care, since my liver had ruptured after my body tried for 48 hours to deliver my baby naturally and the hospital repeatedly refused to perform a caesarean section, that I have no idea if I was actually asked this question. Why was the conversation not properly recorded in my notes? It is all pretty suspicious and only feeds into the sense of cover up and evasion by hospitals in such circumstances.

I am delighted that we are finally putting this very important issue firmly on the political agenda, and that is where it must stay. For those of us inside the Chamber and those of us outside—all the grieving parents watching today—it is too late to save our little boys and girls. But there are other boys and girls—other people out there, thinking of starting their own families, for whom it is not too late. It is our duty to do all we can to ensure that those little boys and girls enter the world as safely as possible. It is our duty to commit ourselves to this cause for their sakes and for the sake of all the babies who have been lost but will never be forgotten.