I found out I was pregnant in January 2011 with mine and my husband’s first child, we were ecstatic when we found out as we had been trying for just over 2 years. Everything was going smoothly at our 12 week scan we found out we were having twins.
At about our 16 week scan we found out they were identical and shared the same placenta and I had to have scans every 2 weeks but everything was going according to plan. At around my 20 week scan they got a bit jumbled up so it was late, I ended up having the 20 week scan at 21 weeks pregnant and found out we were having boys, I had another scan the next week on a Thursday but when we arrived for the scan they cancelled it as I had had one the week before and they said the consultant would think the boys weren’t growing properly if they did the scan.
So with it being cancelled we went to my mum’s in Cambridgeshire for the weekend as we lived in Ipswich at the time. The day after my scan was supposed to be on I started getting cramps so rang my midwife and asked her what they could be she told me it was Braxton hicks and to take some painkillers and it will pass, by the Saturday the pains still hadn’t gone so my mum took me and my husband Daniel to the out of hours doctor at the hospital where she lived, he checked the boys heart beats which were fine and concluded it was Braxton hicks and to take painkillers so I carried on doing what they said as they were the professionals.
I managed to cope as best I could with the pain and by Sunday evening it was time for us to go home back to Ipswich. I awoke early hours of Monday 6th June to immense pain, I went to the toilet and saw that I had the show so I woke my husband up in a panic and he rushed me straight to the hospital, we arrived at about 4:30 in the morning were they said they would check me over.
They checked the boys heart beats which were still fine and told me they would keep me in for monitoring, as I was 22 weeks and 5 days pregnant I thought I had to pee so I got up to go to the toilet but as I stood up I haemorrhaged everywhere, I had never seen so much blood in all of my life, I remember seeing my husband’s face drain of all colour and screaming at him to get help.
Then everything got chaotic with lots of people rushing in and screaming at each other as to what was happening, as nobody knew they didn’t find out what was actually wrong until they checked me internally and found out I was already 10cm dilated and ready to push, so what everyone had thought was Braxton hicks was actually proper contractions and I had been in labour for 4 days and no one had picked it up until it was too late.
I remember Daniel screaming at the doctors asking what was happening and what would happen to his sons, they told him there was no hope for them as they wouldn’t be born alive. During all of the commotion they rang my mum so she could be there and they gave her the choice on who to save me or her grandsons, me and Daniel never got given that choice.
I was given gas and air and an injection to help with the pain, I remember the midwife breaking my waters and it absolutely covering her which made Daniel laugh even in the darkness he was feeling. Our first born son Zack Lee Brame came in to this world at 6:08am on June 6th 2011 crying his little heart out to our shock as they said he would be born dead, I remember he was taken straight out of the room from me, I didn’t get to see him or even give him a cuddle, our second son Blake Stephen Brame was born at 6:18am exactly 10 minutes after Zack and was also screaming his head off I remember looking down and seeing that their placenta had come out whole still attached to him but he was also taken straight out of the room from me.
Things were a blur for a bit until my mum and dad arrived at about 7:30, Daniel’s mum had also come but I don’t remember her turning up just her being there when my parents came in. when my mum arrived I needed the toilet so she took me but was disgusted at the site that was in the bathroom before us, there was dried blood all over the floor and walls of the bathroom and used sanitary pads and dirty blood stained gowns on the floor so it hadn’t been cleaned before I had arrived as I was the only one on that ward.
I remember my mum blowing up at the midwife for the state of it as it was unhygienic and an infection risk, after my parents had arrived a midwife came in asked us if we wanted to see our sons and of course we did but I wasn’t prepared for what was to come she wheeled them in to us but they had sadly passed away but were still warm and twitching, we took photos of the boys and had them blessed and the midwife took their hand and foot prints for us and gave us memory boxes to remember them by, I was asked to see if I wanted to consent to a post mortem of the boys to find out what actually happened so we agreed to do it and ticked the boxes on the forms for all bits to be returned to our chosen funeral director in a few weeks time ready for their funeral.
I was discharged a few hours later where I had to face my midwife in the lobby of the hospital asking me what I was doing there as nobody had notified her to what had happened. I remember breaking down and my mum having to explain everything to her. Me and Daniel had decided to stay at my mum’s for a few weeks as we couldn’t face going home to our flat as all of the baby stuff was there, his mum and dad offered to clear the flat for us as we couldn’t face having to see it all knowing we would never be bringing our sons home.
During the time at my mum’s we started the funeral arrangements through the hospital but decided to go private after finding out we wouldn’t get any ashes if we cremated them or if we buried them they would be put in a mass grave with other babies and just be a number in a plot. After about a week at my mum’s we had to return home as Daniel had to go back to work and we needed to register the boys deaths and births, when we went to register them we actually found out they had lived for over an hour!
And we never got to see them; the hospital had just left them to die. Finding that out destroyed us even more knowing that something could have been done to try to save our sons. A few weeks later we got the call that the boys had come back from the post mortem and that we could go ahead with their cremation so we did they were cremated on July 22nd 2011 at Cambridge crematorium over a month later since they were born, saying good bye was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.
A few weeks later I get a letter in the post stating that the slides from the post mortem are ready to be returned for their funeral when they were supposed to have been returned with the boys, furious I rang them up and told them I wanted them destroyed so that they couldn’t be used for medical studies. About a year and a half later me an Daniel decided to contact a solicitor about a medical negligence claim against the hospital where we found out that I was actually further along in my pregnancy then what they had told me it turns out I wasn’t 22 weeks and 5 days I was actually 23 weeks and 4 days pregnant over the age where they could have tried to save my sons, we also found a lot of discrepancy’s in my medical notes on how they had died but a lot of bits were missing and still are missing like my maternity notes the boys medical records/birth notes and their post mortem results.
In 2013 I was contacted by ITN to do a show called Amanda Holden: exposing hospital heartache on the treatment I had received which aired on 24th march 2014 where we found out that the slides from the post mortem had not been destroyed like they were told to do but were in fact still being held at Addenbrooke’s hospital which is reminisce of the whole alder hay scandal. since airing I have found out that my sons slides from the post mortem will not be destroyed like I want but are being kept on their medical file which I’m not allowed access to and I can never have closure because of this.
To this day we still don’t have answers from the hospital as to what actually happened and why nobody actually picked up my labour until it was too late, my aim for telling my sons story is to get the law changed in to which all hospitals intervene to save a baby’s life, as currently a child born before 23/24 weeks gestation they do not legally have to intervene in saving their lives, we have also discovered that it’s a post code lottery as to where you live if they will help as if I would have given birth at the hospital where my mum lives they would have tried to save my sons as they breathed. The Hippocratic Oath that doctors sign states that all life is precious. I do have all of the proof for my story as I have my medical records which show the discrepancies and the forms for their post mortem. Thank you for reading mine and my son’s story Kelly-Anne Brame .
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