We were not treated as parents, Covid inquiry told

A mother of premature twins said to the cocovio investigation that she had not had the impression of being treated as a parent after giving birth at the early stages of the pandemic.

Tamsin Mullen said she was held in a parallel room for 27 hours after giving birth by a cesarean while her sons were taken into neonatal intensive care.

She said that the “rigid” visiting restrictions indicated that, for next month, only one parent was authorized to visit his newborns at the same time.

“We needed the hospital to understand that we were a family,” she told the investigation.

“We don’t feel like a mother and father of our children as we should have done.”

The Covid survey has taken evidence of the impact on maternity services as part of its third section, or module, which is investigating the impact on NHS and health care.

Ms. Mullen, a mother of three, provided first -hand proofs of “impact” on behalf of 13 pregnancy organizations, baby and parents.

She discovered that she expected twins in 2019 and was considered at high risk. When pregnant with her first child, she was diagnosed with preeclampsia – a condition that can cause high blood pressure and cause serious complications.

Her pregnancy was monitored in close collaboration with analyzes each week due to concerns about the development of one of the babies.

Initially, she said that her husband was able to come with her to scan meetings, but as Cavid spread in March 2020, she was forced to wait in the parking lot outside after driving 50 miles from their home to the nearest hospital.

“It was just before the entry into force of the first locking,” she said.

“I was very nervous. It was very difficult to do this alone knowing [the pregnancy] was at high risk.

In April 2020, Ms. Mullen’s two sons were born prematurely, at 34 weeks, by Cesarean.

Her husband was able to be with her in the operating theater, then in the recovery room for an hour, before she was told cocovated restrictions meant that he had to leave.

Their two young boys then spent a total of 31 days in neonatal intensive care before they could be released.

Ms. Mullen said that the covid restrictions meant only one parent could be with them at a time, even after being moved to the other room of other babies.

The hospital had closed access to the side rooms used for breastfeeding and Ms. Mullen said that she was told to use toilets to express milk, which she did not want to do because of the risk of infection.

She said that the restrictions were “confusing” when both parents lived together and led to the hospital every morning in the same car.

She took care of the two babies alone in intensive care when the staff of the hospital outside the unit told her that they had been tested positive for a bacterial infection called Sarm.

“I was holding our son who was in oxygen at the time,” she said.

“I was in a shock, so I didn’t really say much. [the staff] Left me and I was there alone.

“I didn’t know what it all meant, so I really panicked.”

Later, a doctor explained that the form of the involved STM was a less serious type that could be treated with soap and water.

“We did not feel like we were treated like parents. It was as if we were visitors, and we visited two patients,” she said.

The investigation later heard Jenny Ward, director general of Lullaby Trust, who chairs the pregnancy and charity network for babies.

She said that before Covid, most of the parents would have had 24/7 restrictions to their young children in neonatal intensive care.

It was not until April 2022 in England and Scotland, and May 2022 in Wales, that the councils returned.

She said that the decision to suspend visits from March 2020 for a large number of maternity services had been “extremely damaging”.

Restrictions during prenatal analyzes had a particularly negative impact on certain women who had to receive bad news on the health of their baby by themselves, she added.

During a large part of the pandemic, pregnant women were often told that they were only allowed to have a birth partner present when they are in the so-called “active” work.

Consequently, some were left alone in individual birth rooms without anyone else to “plead for them, to say that they seem to suffer from the extreme,” Ward told the investigation.

After giving birth, others had to recover from surgery at the hospital while taking care of a newborn without their partners being present.