As mothers continue to speak out about their experiences at the New Amster-dam Public Hospital, a young woman from Num-ber 1 Road, Corentyne, yesterday disclosed that she delivered her premature baby while standing at the facility in January.
Alisha Khan, 24, was admitted at the New Amsterdam Public Hospi-tal on January 21st after being transferred from Port Mourant as she was experiencing severe pain and bleeding. At that time, she was 27 weeks pregnant.
According to the woman, in the evening she was told that she would have to be taken to the labour room, since it was expected that her baby was coming prematurely.
However, in the labour room it was explained to her that she would likely have to be transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) since if the baby were to come early, there would be no available incubators.
“They said the hospital do not have so many incubators and other baby in the incubator and they don’t have no empty incubator to put the child if I give birth”, she recalled.
The young woman stated, that one doctor was demanding she be transferred to the GPH, while another said that they could monitor and then decide on the transfer, since at that stage they weren’t sure if the baby was coming.
It was eventually decided that she would be placed in the ward for further observation, and she was told to “walk, go to the ward.”
She recalled that she experienced pain the entire night and during the wee hours of the morning of January 22nd, she informed the nurse. “She [the nurse] went and called the doctor and the doctor take over 30 minutes to come and then just ask ‘What happen?’”
The doctor then left after the young woman told her about the pain, and a short while after the nurse informed her that they could not administer any pain relief medication due to her being pregnant. “Me just lie down with the pain and me a sweat big, big. Me call back pon she [the nurse] and tell she me a get more pain and then she give me an injection”.
A short while after this, Khan said, she felt the urge to go to the washroom, which she did. However, while in the washroom she noticed “something coming down” along with blood so she hurried out back.
She said she was hurrying to call on the nurse. “The nurse tell me if anything let me call she, how she going the next ward to lie down and I come out the toilet and I start call for she and she come and me feel like something a come down and she told me not to strain and push and then she send one next nurse to call the doctor.”
However, at that stage Khan started to deliver her baby while standing which forced one of the nurses to hold the baby in her underwear by front and another by back. “One hand hold it on the front and the other nurse hand hold it on the back.”
According to her, another nurse rushed for a bedpan and placed the baby into it. “I had the baby and the doctor didn’t reach. Till they were cleaning up the doctor reach,” the woman said.
But while nurses were cleaning Khan, she noticed her baby moving in the bedpan. “The baby come down with the sack and afterbirth and they think that the baby pass away. I tell her the baby moving in the bedpan and then they take the baby to the labour room then doctor come and take out the baby from the sack”, she stated.
Her baby boy, who came just around 4 am, was then placed in the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. “I ask them his weight and so and they couldn’t tell me anything, ’til when we collect baby and they give us a lil card then I see his weight”, the mother, who broke into tears while recounting the ordeal noted.
On January 25th, she was informed that her baby had died. The woman said she was told that since the medical professionals were aware that the baby was not fully developed, which led to his death, a post-mortem examination would not be done.
The young woman, who is also a mother of a 3-year-old daughter, said she grieves for her child every day since and she hopes that in her speaking out no other mother would have the same experience. “I think the doctors and nurses need to work more at the hospital”, she said yesterday.
She added, that she believes had the doctor paid more attention to her then maybe her baby could have survived. “If the doctor been come in time maybe them coulda attend to my baby before me and save him”, she said.
She noted that relatives encouraged her to speak out after reading the stories of Vanessa Lewis Sahadeo and her baby, and Bhanmattie Jagnanan, recently in Stabroek News.
