Your stories of birth trauma: 'I gave birth in car park alone after hospital turned me away'

I found your report all too relatable and frustrating to watch. These experiences happen too often to other women.

I had a pre-term birth at the start of the year at five months pregnant. There were multiple signs throughout my pregnancy that things weren't right, but the hospital kept saying I was fine and telling me to go to A&E rather than the early pregnancy unit.

Even at the post-mortem of my daughter the consultant didn't know or look into how I gave birth during my first pregnancy, which would have indicated that for my second pregnancy I should have had a cervical stitch. This prevention could have saved her life.

I went into labour with my first child at 40 weeks. I was already in hospital due to gestational hypertension. I was due to go into the delivery suite as I was over 7cm dilated when a patient who had been redirected from another hospital as its maternity was closed took my room. 

The following day I was induced to restart my labour. Eventually, I entered the final stage. This should be less than one hour but mine was more than four hours. About 30 minutes into the final stage code blue was called as my daughter's heartbeat stopped and I was told I would get a caesarean. 

Then my daughter's heartbeat was detected again and somebody came in who was more urgent so I was told I would be next. Over the next four hours, with my daughter's heartbeat disappearing every time I had a contraction, I waited for a caesarean. My midwife was going spare and was amazing given the situation.

Finally my daughter came out. She had a cord wrapped around her neck four times, was blue and did not breathe for 10 seconds. We were told that she may have suffered brain damage but thankfully that was not the case. 

We got no apology but the hospital did admit that it shouldn't have happened. 

Five women recount their traumatic birth stories.

I nearly lost my baby due to the doctors not listening to me. 

I had a very traumatic experience and feel it was due to negligence.

I was sent home at 6am with contractions that were three minutes apart after a doctor checked me. She was very rude. I drove home while in labour. 

I have not got over this and always wanted to know where things went wrong and why I was treated so badly.

I had my first child in 2020. I went into labour at home and my contractions were three minutes apart but something was not right. I started bleeding between each contraction with severe pain. When we arrived at hospital I was taken to a labour ward but the midwives seemed annoyed we had come when they told us not to over the phone. My contractions were becoming more frequent, as was the bleeding and I was fainting also.

My child's heart rate was dangerously high. My assigned midwife refused to give me pain relief for more than six hours. She was in and out of the room constantly, unsympathetic, inattentive and kept dismissing our concerns, making us feel like we were making a scene over nothing. I continued to bleed gushes of blood down my legs and on to the floor throughout. The midwife then disappeared for a very long time, leaving me alone with only my husband wiping the blood off the floor that was running down my legs while he tried to keep me awake and alert. He was frantic and very traumatised himself. 

We repeatedly pressed the button to call the midwife but nobody came. After she had not returned for more than an hour, he frantically left me alone to go look for her. As it was lockdown and the middle of the night, the ward had barely anyone around and was extremely quiet. He eventually found two midwives at the nurses' station but when he asked where our midwife was, he was told: "Oh, her shift ended. Didn't she hand over to another midwife with you?" No apology was given and no sense of urgency at all. 

I was then assigned another midwife. At this point, I was begging for pain relief, only to be told: "No, you don't need it lovely, you can do this" repeatedly. This midwife was kinder and more attentive but still dismissive to my pain and didn't seem concerned about the bleeding or my other symptoms at all. After my husband finally lost his temper and demanded to see someone more senior, the midwife decided to call a consultant. I was finally inspected by another midwife and found to only be 2cm dilated after 6 hours. 

The consultant came quickly, took one look at me and said "ooh, emergency c-section now". 

I was rushed to theatre immediately. My son was delivered less than an hour later and when I was opened up, I heard the staff say: "Oh no, this is all infected in here!" My placenta was infected and my waters had broken three days before during the night. My son and I spent four days in hospital while we were both on antibiotics to fight the infection. My son had a painful cannula put into his tiny hand as soon as he was born and cried bitterly. 

I was not offered any special support after my son's birth aside from the standard letter saying my placenta was found to be infected and no further action was to be taken. In fact, I never heard from the hospital ever again regarding the birth and how it was handled. 

This was very traumatic and made me not want to have another child until now, five years later, when I had to convince myself that our child would love a sibling. I am now 26 weeks pregnant. It has not been an easy decision and my husband is still traumatised from the whole birth process of our first child. My husband was also not offered any counselling afterwards, while he clearly still suffers some PTSD surrounding the birth. I've opted for an elective c-section this time so that I don't have to ever risk going into labour again.

I gave birth in March this year to my second child. I was turned away to go home despite contractions being quite close and I eventually gave birth outside the hospital car park, on my own, unassisted. Thankfully my son is okay and so was I, but I suffered from a second-degree tear. 

I wanted to share my story about traumatic births - though, truthfully, it started long before my daughter was born and has never really ended. 

In 2015, aged 20, I became pregnant. From early on, I was seriously unwell with hyperemesis gravidarum, vomiting 30+ times a day for the full nine months. I was hospitalised repeatedly and was collapsing from dehydration and exhaustion. But I wasn't believed. I was told "everyone gets sick in pregnancy". Even when I was lying on the toilet floor in A&E, passing out from vomiting and exhaustion, I was left for six hours before anyone helped me. I was eventually admitted to hospital.

Later in pregnancy, during a routine scan, the stenographer told me - unprompted - that my baby would be born with dwarfism, possibly Down's syndrome, and be abnormally small. No emotional support followed. Just fear and silence.

When labour came, it lasted for 36 hours - with sickness every couple of minutes throughout. I begged for an epidural after hours left in a room with my mum and husband. My epidural didn't work properly. I could only feel it in one leg. They attempted it seven times before switching to a spinal block later in labour. A student doctor was brought in while I was mid-labour and in unimaginable distress. 

Hours later my daughter became stuck and both our heart rates dropped. I was rushed into emergency theatre for forceps and ventouse, which I had previously begged not to have. I had the spinal block at this point.

When in theatre they sounded alarms and everyone ran to the theatre. My mum collapsed in the hallway thinking we were dying, my mother-in-law was trying to be strong and support my mum. My husband was crying. I was lifted and tilted by multiple nurses in a panic. I was losing consciousness.

My daughter came out purple, bruised and silent. She was 9lb 1oz - not small, not with dwarfism, not a child with Down's syndrome. I later learned that I should have been offered trauma therapy - and never was. Not a single person followed up with me about what had happened. 

 After we got home, I noticed my baby was yellow/tanned but again, I was dismissed. It wasn't until a community midwife visited and said she had jaundice that anything done. 

It didn't stop there. As a newborn, she refused milk. I knew something was wrong, but when I reached out to specialists, I was blamed. I was made to feel like a bad or inexperienced mum. I was told it was me. Then we were told it was me and my husband. Then when my daughter was three and we still had no answers, they said it was because I was pregnant with my son. Then they blamed the fact we had a new baby. 

Now, nearly 11 years later, I am still fighting. She has since been diagnosed with a severe eating disorder. She was like this since birth. She barely eats, she is constantly exhausted and she struggles every single day with emotional regulation, sleep and pain.

We've been passed between services with no proper care plan in place. We've been ignored, dropped discharged and re-referred for over a decade. The trauma of her birth was not just a one-off event. It became the foundation of how we were treated in the healthcare system.  

We arrived at hospital around 4am on Friday morning. A drip was inserted into the back of my hand incorrectly - it was so painful, I cried. The midwife said if I couldn't stand a drip in my hand she had no idea how I would be when it came to delivering my baby. 

At around 9pm my husband went home to get some sleep. I wandered to the loo about 10pm with terrible pains in my back. I got lost trying to find my way back to my room as all the doors looked the same and I am nearly blind with 5% vision in one eye only. A lovely midwife found me wandering the corridor and took me back to my room. She realised I was having dreadful back pain and examined me again. I was now in established labour so she called my husband, who duly returned.

My requests to have my waters broken during the night were flatly declined - I was told this was my first baby and I couldn't possibly know what I needed.

At around 9:30 on Saturday morning, a midwife asked if I wanted to push - I told her "no". Then panic ensued. My blood pressure was discovered to be sky-high and my baby was in distress. They moved me from my room to the delivery suite.

After whispered conversations in the corner of the room a nurse advised a doctor would deliver me by forceps. Thankfully I had read about forceps, but nothing could have prepared me for the experience that followed.

Both my legs were strung up like a chicken, hoisted into the air and placed in stirrups. The doctor then performed an episiotomy and a mid forceps delivery.

The midwife standing next to me seemed to be very cross when I didn't push exactly how and when she expected me to and she seemed oblivious to the utter discomfort I was experiencing while my baby was being dragged from my body with forceps.

Afterwards, the doctor stitched me up. It took so long that when I came to, everyone had gone and there were just two auxiliary nurses present.

They told me to get off the table and on to my bed (I couldn't see the bed) but even so, I knew I would not be able to physically manage the requested move. So they reluctantly dragged me across on to my bed. The room spun and I asked them to be careful with me.

Three days after delivery, I was alone in my room with my baby when a nurse and a male doctor came in to see me. The nurse announced the doctor wished to do "a little examination". I obediently lay on my back ready for the doctor to feel my tummy. But then I heard him putting on rubber gloves. I sat up immediately and said "you're not going inside me are you?" There was no reply. The  nurse simply said it wouldn't take a minute. I repeated my question in absolute fear.

The next moment his gloved hand was completing an internal examination. The pain was excruciatingly unbearable. I cried out but was told to just stay still.

After the onslaught, they left. I lay sobbing uncontrollably, feeling as though I had just been raped. 

Years later, I learned I could have pressed charges against the doctor who performed the internal examination against my will - and my biggest regret is I never knew I could have done so.

The fact that the nurses had no idea how to support a blind mother pales into insignificance when compared to the vivid memories I still retain of the appalling non-consensual and brutal internal examination I endured just three days after an episiotomy and a mid forceps delivery, resulting in many internal and external stitches.

I only hope no other women are forced to undergo such brutality at the hands of a medical professional. 

My son was brain-damaged due to hypoglycaemia. He was left having seizures on a postnatal ward for eight hours while nurses presumed he was withdrawing from drugs I had taken while pregnant.

Ryan's brain was scanned at five days old and there were huge areas of damaged brain. I was told he would never walk nor talk and instead of any kind of support I was given a leaflet about having him adopted as I was told I would never be able to raise a damaged baby. Ryan is now 18 and still lives with us, he will forever. His case settled in 2019. The hospital admitted liability.

I am still fighting to get answers, changes to maternity and support for the thousands of children damaged by hospitals.

I was pregnant with my first baby and my waters broke at home at 9pm. The contractions started on the way to hospital and I began timing them. 

On arrival, I was told by a midwife that I probably wasn't going to be having a baby any time soon and to get comfy. I was 3cm dilated when I got there at 10.30pm. I was, however, in absolute agony, particularly in my back and I couldn't lay down.

Waters continue to leak and on walking to the bathroom I found the previous mother's vomit and blood on the floor and I hopped over her intermittent splashes to the toilet. I sat on the birthing ball crying in pain for a few hours, trying really hard to do my hypnobirthing breaths.

I asked the midwife if I could turn the lights down and open the window as I vomited into a sick bowl for the fifth time. She said no as it was cold and huffed as she turned the main light off. I cried quietly while she sat with her back to me at a computer screen. I felt like a child.

I noticed I was starting to have no break in contractions and asked if I might be fully dilated. She huffed and asked me to get on the bed, but I couldn't lay on my back it was so painful.

I was 10cm by 1am. She told me to push. And then she just sat in her chair. She told me countless times I wasn't pushing right.

Eventually a doctor came in and asked her to monitor the baby. She didn't. When the doctor came back in she said it was me who was moving too much so she couldn't get a reading.

At 3am four senior midwives came to the door holding stirrups and told me off for not pushing, saying if I didn't push l'd be sent to theatre. So I pushed with all my might against what felt like a brick wall.