A lot to unpick in the article, and as usual contradictory statements. This is what I’ve gleamed from it:
• Lauren wanted a home birth with the midwife that delivered her first child;
• We are unsure if this midwife is a private one or NHS;
• The Naked Doula (Emma) was not mentioned and neither was the birthing pool in the context of being used at any time;
• The article states she called the hospital when her waters broke on 6th July (not her midwife) who advised her to stay at home under midwife supervision because of risk of infection;
• Her midwife visited on 6th took both their vitals which were fine. Lauren was not worried as she felt her birth with Larose was “textbook”;
• She stayed at home on 7th July, her waters broke again which she said might indicate the baby becoming more engaged and therefore the cord compromised but “there was no distress and she had a strong heartbeat”. It is not clear who came to this conclusion or how - Lauren or midwife monitoring and how they were monitoring;
• On 8th July Lauren breastfeeds Larose and this brings on contractions. Tamzin (midwife) comes over and cannot “feel her heartbeat” so calls an ambulance;
• Lauren is taken by ambulance to the hospital where she gives birth in a private room;
• She says she is told Lorena had a low heart rate and was attended to by 10 doctors. She also says she thought they’d found a heartbeat but they hadn’t;
• The hospital’s statement reads: “Lauren was brought to our hospital in an ambulance after her midwife was unable to detect a heartbeat during a home birth, and despite the best efforts of our staff, sadly we were unable to resuscitate Lorena.”
• So Lorena was not born alive and Lauren is having an autopsy to understand why. So at the moment she doesn’t know that Lorena was a “healthy baby” as there may be some underlying condition that was not spotted or could not be known, or her death may have been caused by complications of a prolonged labour not spent under constant medical supervision.
It’s obvious that certain parts of the account are confused probably because of the state that Lauren would have been in at the time - for example thinking there was a heartbeat but there wasn’t, the 10 doctors working on Lorena (seems a bit high to me). I think The Sun don’t help with the way it’s written either.
As others have said, the idea that the hospital would have allowed her to go 2 days after her waters initially broke without asking her to come in, particularly at 40+ weeks seems strange to me. She wasn’t under constant supervision by a medical professional if Tamzin was her only support so I’m unsure how the regular monitoring could have been done.
I wonder if the answers given by the autopsy will give her the peace of mind she craves.