A woman who lost her baby to a late miscarriage said the months-long delay to find out why her daughter died left her trapped “in limbo” and racked with anxiety.
Laurellie Staples, who lives in Hampshire, told The Independent had to wait nine months for the post-mortem examination results after the loss of her baby at 18 weeks in September last year despite being promised the process would take around three months.
The 33-year-old said the delays made her feel “helpless” as she played out “negative scenarios” in her head and said the wait stopped her and her partner from being able to grieve. The results eventually revealed an infection could have caused the miscarriage.
Her comments come as a new research, released to mark Baby Loss Awareness Week, found that more than one in five parents were waiting six months or longer to find out what caused their losses amid a national shortage of specialist pathologists.
The study, which polled almost 1,700 parents who have experienced baby loss, found the waiting time they endured had doubled in the past three years compared to three years ago.
Researchers at Sands, the UK’s leading baby loss charity, found the proportion of bereaved parents forced to wait six months or even longer has tripled.
The charity warned a shortage of specialist doctors to conduct post-mortems on babies was having “devastating” repercussions.
Laurellie Staples says it is ‘heartbreaking to go through labour and know your baby is not with you anymore’— (Laurellie Staples)
Ms Staples, an NHS nurse, said her miscarriage at Royal Hampshire County Hospital left her consumed by “complete shock and devastation” and said it was the “hardest thing” she and her partner had experienced.
She said it was “heartbreaking to go through labour and know your baby is not with you anymore”.
She added: “We spent some hours with her when she wasn’t alive. She was put into a little crib. It is horrible. You’re looking at these tiny hands, these tiny feet - this tiny human. You love them so much but they never got to a chance to be part of your family.”
“That grief is completely overwhelming, you go from feeling zombie-like to crying. I was crying for hours at a time. It is that full heartbreak feeling that only a loss can instil in you. You have your life plans ripped away,” she said.
Ms Staples, who also had an 18-month-old at the time, said it felt “really cruel” that the daughter who died “never got a chance to be whoever she was going to be”.
She said the couple decided to try for another baby while waiting for the post-mortem results but they were constantly worrying there might be something “physically wrong with one of us that meant we lost that baby”.
Laurellie Staples with her first child— (Laurellie Staples)
“You question yourself, was there something I could have done that meant this didn’t happen? The waiting [for results] made me think of more and more negative scenarios. We were just waiting, waiting and waiting,” she added.
“I was worrying if there was something in the post-mortem that would totally change how we manage this new pregnancy. We got the results 32 weeks into the new pregnancy. The post-mortem results showed on one swab a possible sign of an infection but there was nothing clear-cut.”
Ms Staples, who now has an eight-week-old newborn, said she “had no joy” during her most recent pregnancy due to being anxious about having another baby loss.
Clea Harmer, chief executive of Sands, said parents should never be forced to wait more than six months to find out why baby loss happens, saying that “ideally” most parents would get results within three months.
She demanded ministers join forces with NHS England to “close this agonising gap between a baby dying and parents finding out why it happened”.
She added: “The current shortage of perinatal pathologists is having a devastating impact on parents. At Sands, we hear regularly about the heartbreak caused by lengthy delays, by poor communication and about a lack of choice or control.”
Helen Morgan, Lib Dem MP and co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Baby Loss, said: “The current situation in perinatal pathology, with growing numbers of parents being left in limbo and not receiving post-mortem results following the death of their baby, cannot be left unchallenged.”
The Department of Health and Social Care has been approached for comment.
