In this heartfelt blog Siobhan shares her heartbreaking experience of pregnancy complications and loss, where her concerns were dismissed by medical professionals. Despite her instincts, she endured a premature birth and the tragic passing of her baby. A year later, she learns her baby was a girl, not a boy which added an additional layer of complexity to her grief. This blog highlights the importance of listening to mothers, the gaps in women’s healthcare, and the emotional toll of loss.

I’m not a medical professional but I knew something wasn’t right

The saying mother knows best has always been something I’ve attached myself to, as my own mother always knows best. In my situation I knew something was wrong but was made to feel like I was just an anxious first-time mum. I had a very turbulent pregnancy and visited the EPU a couple of times due to bleeding, and was found to have a subchorionic hematoma

On Tuesday 23rd January I had pain in my lower bump, and was being violently sick, struggling to keep down any fluids. At around 11pm I noticed I was bleeding. We went straight to emergency gynaecology and I explained my symptoms and they asked me to do a urine sample. I explained the pain and that I was bleeding and the sickness was different to the sickness I had previously. Due to the serve dehydration, I was unable to provide much of a sample. The Dr came back and explained I had signs of a potential infection and that they would give me antibiotics to treat it. I again explained about the bleeding and how the pain was different from a UTI. The Drs response “I’m 99.9% sure that your baby is ok and the blood isn’t coming from the baby and it’s because of the infection”. I was sent home to rest and take the antibiotics. I’m not a medical professional but I knew something wasn’t right but I felt I was wasting their time, especially being told by another member of staff that most first-time mums are anxious. My mum wanted me to stay in and be monitored but she didn’t want to undermine the staff on the ward.

A year on I can’t stop seeing that image and feeling so scared and helpless. I was on my own

The next evening the pain became a lot worse, my partner was working away in Italy so I was on my own. I didn’t want to bother anyone after being told everything was ok and it was normal to be anxious. That night after trying to soothe the pain with a bath at 12.30 I felt a pop and I thought I had wet myself, within minutes my little baby was born on my bathroom floor. Our baby was alive when born but due to how early it was, stopped moving and breathing within minutes.

A year on I can’t stop seeing that image and feeling so scared and helpless. I was on my own, unable to get to my phone. I just screamed for help hoping a neighbour would hear me. I finally managed to crawl to my phone holding my baby who was still attached by the cord. I was able to call my parents and then 999. My mum with the guidance of the call handler helped me deliver the after birth, there was a lot of blood. I continued to lose blood and felt very weak. An ambulance couldn’t get to us as there was a wait, so my dad had to drive us to the hospital 30 minutes away. I walked into A&E with my baby in a towel still losing blood.

We have had 6 months grieving our little boy, we were told by professionals our baby was a boy.

We were told that I had given birth to a baby boy. We called him Archie, had a funeral for him, his memorial is in the name of Archie and we have grieved a little boy. Having waited 6 months already I had to chase information on the post mortem as I was told it would be around 12 weeks (I fully understand the strain on the NHS and knew it might be a little longer). It wasn’t until I had the courage to go to my first group support session with the bereavement midwife that she managed to push this. She informed me the results were returned a number of weeks prior and I should have been contacted. On top of that, the results show that Archie was in fact a little girl. We have had 6 months grieving our little boy, we were told by professionals our baby was a boy. We had named him Archie you can’t just flip a switch to change that.

I’m almost a year on and despite counselling through the amazing charity Petals (NHS wait was too long) and going back to work and putting on that brave face for everyone, I still sob every day. I relive that moment on my own every day. The outcome may not have been different but if they had listened to me and my mother’s instinct something was wrong, maybe I would not have been alone. I, like many other women have been let down because not enough is done to support women’s health. More needs to be done. 1 in 4 is too high of a statistic and realistically it’s probably higher.

Written by Siobhan Gorman