A 32-year-old Moruca, Region One woman said she was forced to deliver her own child more than two weeks ago after she was allegedly neglected while in labour at the Suddie Hospital.
Dawn Jose is now calling on the relevant authorities, including the Ministry of Health, to investigate the incident.
Jose said she would like to see a nurse, who she has accused of ill-treating her, removed from her post for negligence so as to avoid a recurrence.
In a telephone interview with Stabroek News yesterday, Jose explained that she was admitted to the Suddie Hospital on July 17. “They keep me there for two weeks…They told me that the fluid in the water bag was little, so they keep me and they treat me there with saline,” she said.
Jose explained that she remained hospitalised and on the evening of July 30th, she began to experience contractions.
She said she was examined by a nurse, who told her “she wasn’t ready yet”.
“The nurse treat me real rough. When I told her that I am ready she tell me to walk in the delivery room and she will come behind..…I walk and gone straight on the labour bed and then she take a lil while to come behind. When she come I was already ready to deliver my baby,” Jose related.
“I told her ‘nurse I am ready’….She tell me to come down on the labour bed. So I come down and then when I feel another pain, then I gone up back on the labour bed again and then she said that I am not ready yet. I must wait. And I told her ‘Nurse, I cannot wait. You not feeling the pain. I am ready to deliver,’” she added.
A few hours after, Jose said the pain worsened.
According to Jose, although she insisted that she was ready to deliver, she was mistreated by the nurse, who allegedly refused to assist her.
“She was just hollering at me and telling me ‘I told you to wait, I have something to do.’ And she went to the corner of the room and I don’t know what she was doing,” Jose noted.
Jose, who was pregnant with her sixth child, said she was then forced to use her experience from her previous deliveries and deliver her baby.
“…Then my baby come. I put my hand to hold my baby and then she (the nurse) shout at me again and said ‘what you want to hold?’ and I was to catch my baby when it was now coming out,” Jose further explained.
Jose said the baby fell into a garbage bin, which was at the bed side. “The navel cord burst off and the baby was bleeding very bad,” she related.
At that time, Jose noted, she was helpless and could not move.
Sometime after, she said a doctor entered the room and it was then that the nurse picked up the baby and attended to her.
“…I didn’t hear no crying and I thought my baby died. When the doctor walked out then she (nurse) pick up the baby from the bin and then me hear the baby crying… Then she (nurse) told me my stubbornness make that happen. She tell me if me want to get jail me could get jail for me own baby. If anything did happen to it, I coulda get jail,” Jose related.
She said that doctor subsequently administered an injection and placed her on saline.
Jose believes that her newborn child could have fallen to the floor and died due to the nurse’s negligence. “I would have been the loser not she (nurse) or anybody else. It would have been me,” Jose added.
The woman was discharged from the hospital and the newborn baby is said to be healthy.
