In her heart, Julie McIntosh knew her baby boy had already died. She hadn’t felt Xavier move all night and all morning.
In a panic, the Melton South mother raced to Bacchus Marsh and Melton Regional Hospital on a Saturday in March, 2010, where midwives attempted to find a heartbeat using a monitor known as a Doppler.
“They couldn’t find a heartbeat, so they told me to wait until Monday morning and go to the ultrasound place in Melton … because the hospital didn’t have the equipment.”
At a subsequent ultrasound, staff could not find a heartbeat. Ms McIntosh was referred back to the hospital and was unsuccessfully induced several times over the next three days.
By the Wednesday, Ms McIntosh, who desperately wanted to have a caesarean, gave birth to Xavier. She cradled her long-awaited son, stillborn at 37 weeks.
‘Messing with my head’
When the grieving mother asked for an autopsy to determine the cause of his death, she says the midwives and nurses “played on her emotions”.
“They said he’s deteriorated so quickly; we don’t recommend it … you don’t know how they’re [the coroner] going to treat his organs; – he looks so perfect,” Ms McIntosh said.
“They were just messing with my head.”
Reluctantly, she chose not to go ahead with an autopsy but, deep down, she always believed poor care from hospital staff may have contributed to her son’s death.
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At the time of her pregnancy, Ms McIntosh weighed 103 kilograms and was on a controlled diet for gestational diabetes.
However, Ms McIntosh said the hospital rarely monitored her insulin levels, she was seldom sent for extra ultrasounds, and she claims her concerns about her pregnancy were almost always dismissed.
At 36 weeks, when she called the hospital to say her insulin levels were higher than they had been during her pregnancy, she said midwives told her not to worry and wait for her next appointment.
She claims her concerns were brushed aside, time and again.
But just a week after that call to the hospital, Ms McIntosh was holding her dead baby son.
“As a mother, you don’t want to go through anything like that.
“Now I’m having another boy and my anxiety levels are so high, it’s scary. Am I going to come home with a child this time?”
Ms McIntosh is one of a number of women who have approached law firm Maurice Blackburn for help after revelations the deaths of up to seven babies born at the Bacchus Marsh hospital between 2013 and 2014 may have been avoided.
A spokesman for the hospital said they could not comment on individual cases or individual claims.
