By SANCHESKA BROWN
Tribune Staff Reporter
sbrown@tribunemedia.net
FORTY-FOUR-year-old Natalie Shepard said her worst nightmare became reality when the baby girl she and her husband had tried for years to conceive, died in the Princess Margaret Hospital weeks after her birth.
What makes things more unbearable, Mrs Shepard said, is not knowing how her “Coco” went from healthy to critical in a matter of hours.
Fighting back tears, Mrs Shepard said after several miscarriages and years of heartbreaks, the happiest day of her life was finding out she was pregnant. However, she said that happiness turned to pain and anger after giving birth to a baby girl named Colette, only to have her die without any explanation from doctors.
“I went into labour on July 8th of this year around 2:30am. I live in Freeport so we went to the Rand Memorial Hospital. Six hours later, I gave birth to a healthy baby, even though she was born at 25 weeks. Our paediatrician said she was healthy and had no problems, but because she was premature she had to be kept in the hospital for a week to be monitored because sometimes premature babies forget to breath,” she said.
“On Tuesday the 10th, we spoke to the paediatrician who said she was coming along as scheduled and would be released on Sunday because she was having no problems. The next morning around 6:30am we got a call from the hospital saying something had gone terribly wrong and we needed to get there right away. When we arrived she was hooked up to machines and seizing as they were resuscitating her. She was airlifted to the Princess Margaret Hospital where we were told she had suffered severe brain damage because of a lack of oxygen. She never regained consciousness. She died six weeks later in the neo-natal care unit after her heart stopped. Doctors told us, if her heart ever stopped, they would not try to bring her back because she was brain dead.”
Mrs Shepard said the doctors at the Rand never told her what happened and the doctors at Princess Margaret hospital kept telling her they don’t know what happened “over there.”
“When she stopped breathing an alarm should have sounded immediately. That’s standard for premature babies. When we were in the unit in Nassau, we saw babies stop breathing, the alarm would go off and the nurse would go over and touch the baby and the breathing would resume and the baby would be fine. All the babies need is stimulation. Why wasn’t anyone there to notice Coco wasn’t breathing? All I can assume, because no one is telling us what happened, is she forgot to breath and no one was there,” she said.
“The Rand is ignoring us and the nurses at Princess Margaret Hospital say they don’t know what happened. We want answers. They said they would investigate we are still waiting on that investigation. There needs to be repercussions. We aren’t told what happened? Why did she die? We just want to know. Our paediatrician told us it was gross negligence and she had to have not been breathing for at least 15 minutes for her to have brain damage that severe.”
Mrs Shepard said no matter how long it takes she will get justice for Coco and she will never give up.
Calls to the Rand Memorial Hospital and the Public Hospitals Authority were not answered up to press time.
Comments
natalieshepard 11 years, 5 months ago
Thank you for the article. Although one major correction, Colette was born at 35 weeks gestation, not 25 weeks. Again, thank you for sharing our story. I hope we can prevent this from happening to anyone else.
positiveinput 11 years, 5 months ago
I pray that you get answers and keep the strengh to persue justice for your innocent baby.
nationbuilder 11 years, 5 months ago
Ma'am I am so deeply sorry for your loss. I pray you get the answers you seek.
I also want to thank you Mrs. Shepherd for providing this correction because I was just about to ask how a physician can tell a mother that her child born at 25 weeks is perfectly healthy since 25 weeks is an extremely early birth period.
FredaAlliePrince 11 years, 5 months ago
Natalie, thank you for sharing your story. I have been praying for you and your family since this started. Also, thank you for verifying that Coco was born at 35 weeks, because even I was a little confused about that.
I will pray that you get the answers you so rightly deserved. You are a brave, strong mother, and I will share this story in the States as well. Every parent with a preemie or child in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit, no matter where they live, should use this as a warning.
Good luck to you.
natalieshepard 11 years, 5 months ago
Thank you all for your support. We are determined to not only get answers for our own tragedy, but to try to get policies and procedure put in place so that no other parents will suffer unnecessarily.
mymiracle 11 years, 5 months ago
My Heart goes out to you for your lost. As I too have felt the wrath of PMH only I got my Grand baby out in the nick of time to save her life....I went through 4 months of her being in there and catching infection after infection and no one knew why she suffered a massive stroke while under there watch which damaged 94% of her Brain and they still didnt want to release her. I had to sign her out of there as she was not getting better. We brought her to Miami Children Childrens Hospital and all of the Diagnosis PMH gave us was wrong which means they were treating her for 4 months with the wrong medications.....Please dont let your situation rest get answers as I tried for months to get some.....
242smt 11 years, 5 months ago
This is beyond tragic. And the Rand's silence is obviously exacerbating the unimaginable pain that Mrs. Shepard and her family are enduring.
The person or persons, and institutions, responsible must be held accountable. It is bad enough that this happened - to try to cover it up is revolting.
Where is the Minister of Health? Dr. Gomez will you order an investigation?
Ironvelvet 11 years, 4 months ago
As a physician currently living abroad, who will return home in the coming years, I want to thank you Mrs. Shepard for the article and my condolences on your tragic loss.
The Bahamas and hospitals worldwide need to do better with regulating hospitals, nurses, physicians, and other staff. There are several articles that show that the primary reason physicians are sued is because there is no acknowledgement of error or apology on the part of the physician or the hospital secondary to fear of a lawsuit. However, now knowing that the baby was 35 weeks without any problems and only hospitalized for observation, there would not have been a need for Collette to be in an icu setting, just a regular nursery. Your point on why it was not noted that she was not breathing is a major issue that should have been noted in a nursery setting. This same incident could have happened and does happen at home. Again, not knowing all of the details it is difficult to thoroughly comment.
I completely support your efforts to get the explanation you not only deserve, but is your right. Its efforts as yours that contribute to better hospital care for all patients in the future.
DMika 11 years, 4 months ago
Rand Memorial Hospital charge nurse, primary nurse and neonatal nurse practitioner why didn't you respond to baby Coco (Collette) when she called for help via her monitoring system? As soon as she showed signs of any distress, the alarm would go off. Technology only works when someone is there to respond. Where were you?!
jenniferk 11 years, 4 months ago
This is unacceptable!!!! Why didn't you come to little Coco's aid when she needed you? Then to top it off you give these poor parents no explanation!!!!!! Shame on you! You need to have a full investigation into this and give these parents an explanation and an apology.
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