A 35-year-old mother whose newborn daughter died during delivery is blaming Mandeville Regional Hospital, claiming some level of negligence among nurses.

The woman, who had been looking forward to the birth of her second child, said she was admitted to the hospital on July 17 after a continuous increase in her blood pressure triggered concerns about her pregnancy.

She said that throughout her stay she was given several medications to help lower her blood pressure some of which, she claimed, made her drowsy.

The woman, who opted not to be named, also told Jamaica Observer Online that on Wednesday, July 23 she repeatedly told nurses that she couldn’t feel her baby moving.

“They brought me to look at the monitor, and I heard the heartbeat,” she recounted tearfully. “One of the nurses even asked, ‘Do you feel better now that you’re hearing that?’ I said ‘yes’.”

She said that while the nurses did attend to her after she told them she was not feeling the baby’s heartbeat, they did not update the doctor on duty.

“No one told the doctor; that wasn’t on record. So when I reached out to my doctor early Thursday morning [July 24] and he reached out to them, that is when they jumped to get me to go to the theatre,” she claimed, adding that during her time in the hospital had been updating her personal doctor about her condition via text messages.

“After the surgery, my doctor was there. He told me he had good news and bad news. The good news was that the surgery went well. The bad news was that my baby didn’t make it,” she told Observer Online.

The mother said she received no formal explanation from the hospital until the following day, Friday, July 25.

“Somebody came to me and said, ‘Oh, I’m from the paediatric ward and I’m here to explain to you, and I’m sorry we haven’t been here before’,” the grieving mother said.

According to her, the person told her that the baby wasn’t breathing at birth and that they tried to resuscitate her.

“I don’t want to tell any lie, but I could swear she said they gave her antibiotics to help and nothing worked,” she said, adding that because she couldn’t believe the news she asked, ‘When she came out, was she breathing?’.

“They said ‘no’, the person said ‘no’,” the mother said between sobs.

When Observer Online contacted the hospital’s Chief Executive Officer Alwyn Miller for comment he said he had not been made aware of the incident but stated, “It’s not routine for me to necessarily hear about that unless there is an issue.”

He added that if the family believes they were wronged, “I would invite them to come and see us and complete a complaint form. The Ministry of Health has its complaint forms and complaint systems so we invite the public to come forward and let us know where they have a concern and give us in writing. We’ll investigate and we’ll explain to the best of our ability.”

Amid her grief the mother is awash with regret.

“My biggest mistake is not messaging my doctor that day and letting him know what was happening on Wednesday, instead of Thursday,” she said tearfully.