A BRADLEY couple say lessons must be learned after their baby died at just an hour old.
Stuart and Tracy Bray have agreed an out of court settlement after a string of errors before the death of their daughter Tily Ann in September 2009 at the Huddersfield Family Birth Centre run by Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust.
The Brays are now seeking assurances that the NHS will learn lessons from its mistakes.
Tracy, 36, said: “When we read the report about all the failings we knew we had to take some action. This cannot be allowed to happen to anyone else.
“I hope they will learn from the mistakes they made. We’ll never be able to put this behind us. It’s something we’ll always have to live with, but I don’t want anyone else having to live with it either.”
Tracy became concerned in the final stages of pregnancy after issues were raised about her unborn baby’s growth but she was assured by staff on a number of occasions that everything was fine.
She experienced irregular contractions at 39 weeks pregnant and she visited the Huddersfield Family Birth Centre at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary two days later at 5am but was sent home.
She returned to the Family Birth Centre at 11pm that day but despite suffering considerable blood loss no action was taken until an ambulance was called for a transfer at around 1am on September 18. By the time it arrived Tracy was in active labour and the transfer was cancelled as she continued to give birth.
Tily Ann was delivered at 4.30am and although she had a heartbeat she was not breathing so a resuscitation device was brought into the room but wasn’t functioning properly.
It wasn’t until seven minutes later that a paediatrician was called who didn’t arrive until 35 minutes after the birth. But by this time Tily had no heartbeat and had died.
An internal investigation carried out by the Trust was highly critical of staff and the equipment used.
It highlighted problems with the monitoring of Tily Ann’s growth in the weeks leading up to the birth, stating that further investigations should have been carried out which would have flagged Tracy as a high risk patient – something the hospital failed to do.
