It was a scene straight out of a nightmare for any parent: cradling the lifeless body of your own baby. Kristian Jaworski from the United Kingdom died five days after his birth in June last year, incurring brain damage from a “prolonged and extended instrumental delivery.”
Baby Kristian’s mother, Tracey Taylor, said she repeatedly insisted getting a caesarian delivery after a previous childbirth’s complications — but still underwent vaginal delivery allegedly due to costs.
Now in a report sent to the Department of Health, senior coroner Andrew Walker informed of future death risks if the National Health Service (NHS) in the country continues to favor vaginal delivery over C-sections due to cost concerns.
The report described how Tracey told the medical staff of North Middlesex University Hospital many times that she needed a C-section following complications from giving birth to her elder child, Sebastian, Three and a half years earlier. Doctors at that time told her she maintained a narrow birth canal and thus needed the C-section if she will ever give birth again.
The information, the report added, was not logged into her medical notes, with her pleas for a caesarean ignored during a lengthy, difficult labor. According to the inquest, doctors repeatedly tried to deliver baby Kristian using suction and forceps, until they decided to conduct an emergency C-section under general anesthetic.
Kristian suffered oxygen deprivation and severe brain damage upon his birth, never able to recover.
“The cause of death is likely to have been asphyxia as a consequence of prolonged and extended instrumental delivery,” the coroner explained in the report.
“I feel that I was treated like an over-anxious woman who was too frightened to give birth,” said Tracey in a BBC radio interview.
The university hospital has since accepted responsibility over the death. Although admitting they “made mistakes,” director Dr. Cathy Cale said their own investigation showed that cost was not their consideration — the team instead decided to do natural delivery “for clinical reasons alone.”
“[I]n theater, the registrar made an assessment of Miss Taylor’s birth canal and reached the conclusion trial of instruments would be appropriate,” part of the statement read.
Cale added that new guidance has since been drawn up for staff to limit prolonged instrumental delivery to avoid the consequences.
The health department, which has about 50 days to respond to Walker’s report, estimated the average cost of vaginal delivery to be at £1,985 ($2,819), versus the average cost of £3,781($5,370) for Caesarian operation.
Health minister Ben Gummer expressed deep sympathies for the family and said they have been “let down terribly” in a tragedy that he said should not be repeated anymore.
Rebecca Schiller of nonprofit group Birthrights asserted that the baby’s death is telling of the importance of listening to women’s choices and decisions in maternity care.
“From caesarian section to homebirth they all-too-often find services that don’t exist or are barred to them,” she said.
Photo: Sara Neff | Flickr
