The pain of losing a child is perhaps the hardest to recover from. So, when a young mother’s hopes of going home with her new bundle of joy were short-lived, one can just imagine the pain she is going through.
Mother of the dead baby: Tenesia Giddings
Tenesia Giddings is a 31-year-old mother from Lethem, Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo), who recently lost her third child at the Lethem Hospital. She is contending that her child died as a result of a nurse’s callousness and delay.
The woman went into labour at just about 09:00h on Saturday last after she was experiencing pains. She arrived at the hospitals with her contractions four minutes apart. The nurses at the hospital proceeded to examine her, after which it was related that the expecting mother was 2cm dilated.
Giddings claimed that as soon as she was admitted, she started having pains three minutes apart. She was then ordered by the nurse to lie down.
“They told me that they don’t want me walking, walking, so they gave me some saline. I started feeling as though I want to go to the toilet. I feel like I want to pee and mess (defecate) at once. Two times I went to the toilet and the saline they give me it was running…. She [the nurse] tell me I got to rest because if I don’t rest, I wouldn’t have the strength to push the baby out,” the mother related.
The young mother said after using the washroom, she took a bath and went back to lie down. Shortly after, she said, she started having contractions one minute apart. The woman told the nurse how she was feeling, and the nurse said to her that she cannot be dilated so fast.
“She told me no, the time that I check you, nothing can’t happen so fast. She kept telling [me] I’m 2cm and I have to wait until I reach 10cm. So, I did what she said and I went and rest so that I can get my baby good…when she come back to me, the pain keep coming one after the other and I know that is time to get baby,” she said.
Giddings said she knew it was almost time to have her baby because it was her third pregnancy, and she knew the feeling. She said she kept calling for the nurse and the nurse kept telling her that she was not ready.
“I told her I can’t bear this pain no more and she gone…I couldn’t even get up. I had to send a girl near to me to call her because she wasn’t coming back anymore. I started feeling like something was coming out…I feel like something was coming out from the front and the back and I was trying to understand this thing…. not knowing it was the baby wanted to come out,” Giddings explained.
The woman said the nurse sent back the other patient to tell her that she has to wait or let her walk and go to her. She said she told her friend that she cannot make it to walk and if they can come and help her to get a wheelchair.
“I didn’t push, they said I pushed but I didn’t push I laid on the bed and I was waiting for them. All of a sudden I feel something pushed my panty and I wanted to know is what. So when I pushed my hand and I feel, I feel a head so I pulled down my panty a little.”
According to Giddings, ten minutes later, the nurse turned up and was standing in front of her with her hands to her waist.
“I don’t know how to deliver a baby so I just push down my panty and I tried not to push. I tried to hold up the baby by myself. When she come, she just stand up with her hands on her hip and she keep watching me. I told her that the baby coming out and I feeling the head and she didn’t believe me. I had to lift up my panty and I told her to look and when she watched she see the head.”
Immediately, the nurse rushed to the woman and told her to push the child out. Giddings told this publication that when the child came out, the nurse wrapped it in a sheet and started hitting her baby so that it can cry. However, the baby did not cry.
“She keep trying to make the baby cry and the doctor tell she take the baby and shake the baby in the sheet. She do all of that and the baby ain’t even crying. When she done, she carry the baby to the labour room and she left me on the bed for half an hour before she come back to clean me out,” the grieving mother related.
Giddings related that for about five hours, she was unable to see her child and kept asking if her child was okay. The mother was even trying to find out the gender of her baby but the nurse just said: “Yes, the baby is okay but they weren’t getting the baby to breathe properly, but the baby is now breathing.”
She said that another nurse came to her after waiting for hours, and took her to see the child. She said when she looked at her baby the child was “looking dark”. She was then told that she just delivered a boy.
Giddings said at the time her child was wearing an oxygen mask, which made her scared.
“When I go and sit down with my baby, I hold my baby and I felt hurt. They came and they bore my baby…I don’t know what she give him…it is something she take out from the thing that does give people saline…she took it out from there and she give my baby. I didn’t know what she was doing and she said she nursing the baby,” the mother related.
She said when she held her child, she could feel him breathing but he was not moving. She said her baby held her hand once and that was it.
Giddings said the nurses collected the baby and gave him multiple injections and she did not see him again. However, the following day, the nurses came to her and told her that her child had died.
The heartbroken and terrified mother is now calling on higher authorities to look into the situation because she claims that her child did not deserve to die due to the callousness of the nurse at the hospital.
