It’s a struggle for Sarah Ramsaroop to sleep at night, worried that turning on her stomach may damage her unborn baby. But it has been two weeks since Isaiah died before he could open his eyes to the world.
The 22-year-old Williamsville manager struggled to hold back tears when she described how she delivered her baby on a wheelchair while waiting for help at the San Fernando General Hospital. Even with the foetus at her feet, still attached to her womb, Ramsaroop said she waited close to nine hours before she was administered medical help at the hospital. The trauma has caused her to self harm and she is now contemplating legal action against the South-West Regional Health Authority (SWRHA).
When asked about her recovery, she said: “I would like to show you how I am feeling. I started cutting up my hands because of the pain emotionally and physically and mentally. It is just hard to deal with. For nine hours. To see your child out for nine hours and nobody attending to you. They did not even treat me like a human being, it was like an animal.”
Ramsaroop checked into the hospital’s Accident & Emergency Department on January 6 around 11 pm after suffering severe pain from complications. She said she previously visited the hospital several times because of the debilitating pain but was sent home each time, even though she knew something was wrong. Isaiah was due July 13. Despite being enrolled at the clinic at the Williamsville Health Centre, there was never any indication that her pregnancy was in trouble.
She said, “I remember my boyfriend telling the ward attendant to bring a trolly because I could not stand, I could not walk. The only thing I could have done was lay down. They still brought the trolly and I insisted because I was in a lot of pain. I went into triage, crying wotj pain, telling the nurse that their was a ball in my belly with fever. I could literally move the ball.
She was like, ‘You have to wait your turn, there are other people in front of you’.
“Around 2 am, pain! All I remember was telling my boyfriend that something was coming out, ‘My baby coming out’ and when I looked down, blood on the wheelchair. The baby was out already. I told the doctor, she said I need to hold on. Looking for ward attendants, none. My boyfriend had to lift me from the wheelchair and put me on the trolley bed. When he put me there, the doctor came and said ‘You’re panicking for nothing’. Me, in my mind: ‘Why would I panic for nothing, my baby is already out’,” Ramsaroop said.
Despite given the assurance that she was ok, Ramsaroop said when the doctor returned and raised her dress, she too began to panic.
With her placenta and umbilical cord out on her leg but still attached to the womb, she was again made to wait some more hours.
“Between those hours, every time I look down, I’m just seeing my baby there, lifeless, helpless, motionless and I can’t do anyhing. I begged them from when I went upstairs, ‘somebody, you all could see me? Somebody? Anybody?’”
However, she said the staff’s attitude was scornful, even from the intern, who attended to her. It was only a midwife from another ward who helped her without making her feel as if she was an animal.
“An intern, again, came and did not give me any pain medication. She started scraping me out on the ward. Pain! I held the doctor’s hand because I was really scared. It was my first time going through this. She was like ‘Don’t touch my hands, I don’t want you touching my hands’. So I am crying, crying and when they stopped, it was like ‘OK, the baby out, they could get rid of the baby’ because they weren’t allowed to give me the baby. They just said you can look at the baby. I took pictures of my child. I was not supposed to but the nurse said go ahead. I took the pictures of the child and then they took my child and they went with my child.”
She said she and her boyfriend were trying to begin their family for the past two years but after the trauma, she is afraid to try again. Despite a request for the medical report detailing what happened, she has been told to try again.
SWRHA’s acting medical director of Health Dr Pravinde Ramoutar said an investigation has been launched and Ramsaroop has been iniatiated