Going into labour early is a stressful and scary experience for any pregnant woman, let alone just 25 weeks into your first pregnancy.
After her waters broke prematurely, the frightened 30-year-old woman was rushed to Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, Scotland.
The baby was found to have a prolapsed cord and was also in the breech position.
Despite those complications and the woman’s cervix only being two to three centimetres dilated, Dr Vaishnavy Laxman, a consultant gynaecologist who was working at the time, insisted on a vaginal delivery.
What happened next is the stuff of nightmares.
During the complicated delivery, the baby’s head was decapitated when Dr Laxman told the patient to push while she pulled his legs at the same time. The baby’s body detached, leaving the head inside the mother’s womb.
A medical tribunal heard that the woman later had a C-section to remove the head, which was then “reattached” to the body so the grieving mother could say goodbye to her son. It’s claimed the mother was not even in established labour at the time.
During the trial, the woman addressed Dr Laxman directly, staring her down and repeating “I don’t forgive you — I don’t forgive you,” The Independent reports.
“I would never use the word stillborn, he was not stillborn he was decapitated. I was pregnant, my first pregnancy — I wasn’t sure what was going on and I was told it was the safest place possible,” she said.
“Nobody explained the plan or risks associated. It was like disorganised chaos and I was scared.”
“ … when I was taken to the labour suite nobody told me what was happening. A lot of people were talking, they kept saying the baby needed to come out but nobody looked at me in the eye and told me what was going to happen,” she revealed.
“The only pain relief I was given was a spray on my tongue. I was told it was meant to loosen my cervix but I was not given gas and air — I was in pain. I had the doctors putting their hands inside me and I had them pushing on my stomach and then pulling me down.
“I tried to get off the bed but they pulled me back three times and just said they had to get the baby out. They twice tried to cut my cervix and nobody told me they were going to do it. “There was no anaesthetic. I said to them ‘it doesn’t feel right, stop it, what’s going on, I don’t want to do it’ but nobody responded to me in any way.”
UPDATE: The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service panel has ruled that Dr Laxman’s decision resulted in the unborn baby being decapitated. She “set in train a course of events” which resulted in the decapitation of the premature baby “and to this extent contributed to that decapitation,” they noted, reports BBC.
“But for Dr Vilvanathan Laxman’s error of judgement in this regard, the decapitation would not have occurred.”
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