A WOMAN who suffered severe morning sickness has told how she lost her baby after hospital failings.
Katie Fraser, 35, had the medical condition hyperemesis gravidarum during her pregnancy – excessive sickness that goes beyond the first few weeks and can need hospital treatment.
Katie was told by medics that she was suffering a ‘panic attack’ at 33 weeks, but her body was actually shutting down due to starvation.
Tragically, following an emergency C-section, her newborn son, Alexander, was born without a heartbeat and despite being resuscitated, survived a day, before passing away.
Now Katie, a PA, is advocating for HG sufferers and wants hospitals across Britain to update their guidelines on treatment and care.
She says: “If medics had listened to me when I said I couldn’t breathe that day, and delivered Alexander earlier, he may still be here today.
“I want all maternity hospitals and units to provide access to supportive care, counselling and proper treatment to help manage this debilitating condition so that tragic losses can be avoided in the future.”
Katie, and husband, Zander, 36, from Glasgow, Scotland, discovered they were expecting in December 2021.
At first, like many expectant mothers, Katie felt nauseous.
Only, by January of the following year, she started vomiting and whenever she ate, brought her food back up.
She says: “It got so bad that I visited my GP who prescribed me with anti-sickness tablets.”
They helped for a few days but things worsened, and soon she was vomiting every half an hour and had lost half a stone by her 12-week scan.
She says: “On a good day, all I could manage was plain food, like salted crisps or ice lollies and a bit of a ham sandwich.
“I felt awful.”
Eventually, she was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, which the Princess of Wales also suffered with during all three of her pregnancies.
For the next two trimesters, Katie was in and out of hospital during periods where she couldn’t even drink water without being sick.
Katie explains: “My life was just throwing up constantly.
“I even considered a termination at one point because I was so poorly. I felt so guilty but it was really affecting my mental health.”
Soon, she’d missed weddings, birthdays and barely left the house.
Despite this, her baby was developing well and was a healthy size.
Eventually, in June 2022, at 31 weeks pregnant, Katie was admitted to a high dependency ward at The Princess Royal Maternity Hospital for starvation ketoacidosis.
The nurses said I was having a panic attack, but I knew there was something else very wrong. I felt like I was suffocating and my body didn’t feel right. I was so worried.
Katie
Starvation ketoacidosis occurs when the body has not received enough glucose for energy for a prolonged period.
She was severely dehydrated and put on a drip.
They also treated her with steroids and she was eventually discharged over a week later.
She says: “By this point, I was desperate for them to deliver the baby, as I couldn’t cope.
“But they wanted me to get to 36 weeks where it’d be safer.”
A few days later, she was rushed to hospital again when she struggled to breathe.
She says: “The nurses said I was having a panic attack, but I knew there was something else very wrong.
“I felt like I was suffocating and my body didn’t feel right. I was so worried.”
Hours later, she was moved to a high-dependency ward and finally had her bloods taken.
Medics then realised she had reoccurring starvation ketoacidosis which can cause rapid breathing as the body starts to shut down.
After doing a fetal scan, they also discovered the baby’s heart rate was in distress and Katie was taken for an emergency C-section.
But her baby boy, Alexander, was delivered with no heartbeat.
He was resuscitated and brought around after 17 minutes, before being put in an incubator on a ventilator.
Katie says: “When I came around from surgery, I couldn’t wait to meet my baby.
“Zander told me we’d had a boy but he was very poorly in NICU.”
Later that morning, Katie was wheeled down to see him.
She says: “He weighed 5lbs and 2oz, and looked just like Zander with curly hair, and had a little red in it, like me.
“He was perfect.”
By Lizzie Parry, Head of Health
KATIE Fraser’s heartbreaking story is sadly all too familiar.
When she was gasping for breath, terrified and fearing for her unborn baby, nurses dismissed her symptoms as a ‘panic attack’.
Deep down, Katie knew something was seriously wrong.
She believes that had medics listened to her, her baby boy Alexander might have survived, and an investigation by the hospital found ‘missed opportunities’ to prevent his tragic death at just one day old.
Katie’s bravery in speaking out will help raise awareness of a rare condition that can, as baby Alexander’s short life proves, have devastating consequences.
It comes just days after an inquiry into traumatic childbirths called for an overhaul of the UK’s maternity services and postnatal care after finding poor care is too often “tolerated as normal”.
Evidence from more than 1,300 women found some were found in blood-soaked sheets, others were mocked, shouted at and denied basic needs including pain relief.
It’s simply not good enough.
There is no doubt that the NHS is under a huge amount of pressure and staff are working flat out to deliver the care pregnant women deserve.
But more needs to be done to support staff on our maternity wards, to ensure lessons are learnt from the tragedy of cases like Katie’s, and other families are spared what she and her husband Zander had to go through.
The only person who truly knows your body and how you feel is you, so if you suspect something isn’t right it’s vital to speak up – and it’s even more important that medics listen.
But a consultant explained how Alexander suffered brain and organ damage due to being starved of oxygen and wouldn’t survive.
Devastatingly, the next day, he was taken off life support and passed away in Katie’s arms.
She says: “If the hospital had listened to me and done tests earlier, they might have done a C-section in time and Alexander could’ve been saved.
“He was a healthy baby otherwise, we are heartbroken.”
Over a year on, NHS Glasgow and Clyde reviewed the care Katie and baby Alexander received.
Their report concluded that: “Despite the fact that staff acknowledged she had previously been treated for starvation ketoacidosis they did not consider the possibility of recurrence when she was readmitted four days after discharge from hospital with symptoms of vomiting on 26/06/22.
“She had a senior obstetric review daily and the reviewers were of the opinion that, despite the fact that starvation ketoacidosis is a rare situation, this woman was known to have developed this clinical scenario at 31 weeks and this should have highlighted the concern for this woman and her baby on her subsequent admission (26/06/22).
“This was a missed opportunity to intervene and blood gas analysis should have been taken to monitor for this situation given the ongoing vomiting, no dietary intake and ketonuria.
“Treatment to reverse the effects of the acidosis or delivery at an earlier stage may have changed the sad outcome of fetal compromise and subsequent death.”
Katie added: “They’ve since updated their guidelines for HG sufferers.
“Sickness in pregnancy may be common but it isn’t always normal.
“HG sufferers need to be monitored closely, physically and mentally.
“My baby’s death could’ve been avoided and I don’t want anyone else to go through what we did.”
For support with sickness in pregnancy please visit – https://pregnancysicknesssupport.org.uk/
