A hospital in Lancashire has been forced to issue an apology after a father had to deliver his own baby when a midwife left the room.
According to the BBC, Thomas Howard pressed the emergency button to summon staff to the room, but nobody came until after the baby was born.
His partner gave birth to their daughter Madeline on 26th January 2010. The midwife who was supposed to be helping them through the pregnancy had apparently left the room to get Mr Howard’s partner Emily Baron’s medical notes.
The couple had every reason to be concerned as Ms Baron had encountered difficulties in her two previous births, with one having a cleft palate and the other suffering breathing problems. Fortunately there were no such problems in this case and Mr Howard said the birth itself took only minutes, after Ms Baron had been in labour for two hours and 15 minutes.
Mr Howard was understandably upset by the care, or lack of it, received by his partner and he believed that delivering the baby himself was his “only choice really, because no-one from the hospital was there at the time”.
The NHS Trust are said to be looking very closely in to what happened and Ruth Gildert of the East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust apologised for what happened and insisted that they would “be contacting the family directly.”
This was a lucky escape for the hospital, as Madeline appears to be fine following the birth, but this lack of attentiveness could have led to injury to either mother or daughter and the hospital needs to improve procedures to make sure that women in labour are not left in such a vulnerable position. If any complications had occurred resulting in injury, then the family would most likely have been able to make a claim for negligence against the hospital.
