The high number of stillbirths shows we are not listening to women properly | Rebecca Schiller
Kate Nelson was pregnant with twins four years ago when she began to feel ill and couldn't keep food or water down. At the hospital she saw yet another overstretched clinician who didn't know her or her history. Kate knew something was wrong and told them so. But despite her complex multiple pregnancy, her concerns were dismissed. The system that all too often treats women like idiot visitors crashing around in their own bodies told her to go home, put her feet up and stop worrying.
Her husband called me (her doula - someone who supports a woman during the birth process) later that day. I could barely make out his words as he told me that Kate was in a coma, their son Thomas had been stillborn and his brother Henry was being rushed to Great Ormond Street Hospital with life-threatening complications. He asked me which of them he should stay with. I didn't know what to say.
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