Baby dies after C-section delay
2009-03-12 09:52
Pretoria - Caroline, 24, and Werner Coetzee, 23, have printed, "Mommy and Daddy's laatie" on their son, Waldo's funeral notice.
Waldo died shortly after his birth at Kalafong Hospital in Pretoria on March 1, after an emergency caesarean was delayed.
Coetzee had been in labour for nearly 13 hours before the operation was done.
"Everything was ready. They just took too long," she said tearfully.
She was admitted to hospital at about 01:30 after her water broke. By 08:00, she was 9cm dilated, but the baby wouldn't drop, said her husband, a computer consultant.
When she had visited a prenatal clinic, Coetzee was apparently warned that she might have to get a caesarean due to problems with her cervix.
Caroline was only taken into the theatre at about 15:00, after Waldo's heart beat weakened.
Begged for operation
This was almost two hours after her husband apparently begged the hospital to do an emergency caesarean because she was in so much pain and the labour wouldn't progress.
Then, on top of everything else, they injected her with penicillin, to which she is allergic.
"They got the baby out after struggling for about a half hour. He breathed very quickly. The next moment there were a lot of nurses around him," she said.
Staff took the baby to the intensive care unit, but he died a while later.
"They showed us his body. He was full of bruises on his head and left shoulder," said her husband.
A doctor apparently said the baby had been stillborn and it was not necessary to issue a death certificate, but the Coetzees were still asked to fill in forms for a post-mortem.
Dirty bed
After this, Coetzee had to lie for hours in a dirty bed, with pools of urine and blood on the floor around the bed due to her leaking catheter.
It was apparently cleaned only a day later.
"The cockroaches gathered in masses around the basin and one ran onto the bed. If you lifted the mattress, they sat in rows," said her sister, Elaine van der Merwe.
Caroline's husband had her released, after which a private doctor treated her caesarean wound, which had apparently become septic at Kalafong.
The Coetzees are heartbroken. "It had been one of my biggest dreams to have a baby. After all the pain, I'm left with nothing," Caroline said.
The health department said their preliminary finding was that Waldo died due to cerebral bleeding, but that they were waiting for the final report. The case is being investigated.