A mother-of-five who waited six days before midwives broke her waters despite recommendations she be induced after arriving at hospital has said she believes staff shortages were to blame for the delay.
Experts have warned NHS maternity care is in crisis, with long waits for planned inductions to start potentially putting the lives of women and their babies at risk.
Meanwhile, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has reported delays in induction of labour due to staffing levels at hospitals around the country in its recent reports.
Janette Pain, 35, from Norfolk, told i she believes considerable pressure and inadequate staffing at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital last September also contributed to her inability to receive an epidural and a medical error which put her baby under undue stress.
Ms Pain was one of at least four women waiting up to five nights for their induction process to be started or completed at the time.
The supermarket worker had made her way to the hospital after her initial date for induction was pushed back due to a lack of space on the ward.
She said: “On the Saturday I was told that there was no space and to wait for a phone call on Sunday. They phoned at lunchtime and asked me to come straight in to the ward.”
Hospital staff had recommended Ms Pain have an induction as two previous scans had shown her baby’s growth was static. An induced labour is one that is started artificially often when the baby is overdue, the mother or baby has a health problem, waters break more than 24 hours before labour starts or the baby is not growing.
It took six days after arriving at the hospital for Ms Pain to be moved to the delivery suite and have her waters broken “because the delivery suite was too busy”. Staff would not artificially break her waters until there was capacity for her in delivery.
In the meantime, Ms Pain said the induction process was started and paused several times.
“They kept putting the inductions on hold,” she said. “They’d say if this hasn’t worked you’ll get another one in 24 hours and then they’d say, ‘oh sorry, all inductions are on hold’.”
Ms Pain said was not really concerned about the health of her baby during the wait because midwives periodically checked the baby’s heartrate and she had given birth four times before, but she said she would “definitely” have felt different if it was her first child.
“I was really more worried about my children at home,” she said, adding her mother was the only one caring for her four boys, including one with special needs and disabilities (SEND), at the time.
She also believes the considerable pressure staff were under at the time contributed to an error in the administering of her pain relief, which caused her baby girl to pass a stool inside her uterus due to stress.
Ms Pain said the incident “was quite traumatic”.
“The midwife unfortunately mixed up the saline and oxytocin lines and I therefore had an extremely high dose of oxytocin [a drug used to make the womb contract] and ended up having a constant contraction for 40 minutes.
“No pain relief was my choice initially as have birthed three children with just Tens [Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation] machine before, but I was begging for an epidural in this case which was not forthcoming.”
Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NNUH) midwifery director Stephanie Pease said the trust was sorry about what Ms Pain experienced.
Ms Pease added that reducing delays in the induction of labour remains ongoing work at the NNUH but the trust does not see this as a “systemic issue”.
She said: “We do recognise the impact that delayed induction can have on a woman and her family. We adhere to the NICE guidelines and have a strict induction policy which has been adopted across the whole Norfolk and Waveney system that we all follow.
“We look to make every woman comfortable while they are waiting to be induced including having their partner stay with them in the hospital and monitoring the health of both mother and baby at regular intervals to ensure any delays in the induction process are appropriately managed and not impacting on their physical wellbeing.”
