Police crammed Naomi Bowden’s stillborn baby girl into a Styrofoam box. Her story will horrify you

A mother whose daughter was unexpectedly stillborn has described a series of hospital mistakes that left her watching police stuff her baby into a Styrofoam box and later being forced to identify the body in a morgue.

Naomi Bowden, 41, cried as she told the NSW Birth Trauma Inquiry about her grief as detectives left her department with her daughter Bella in a cooler.

No one explained how her daughter went from “fine” to dead in two hours, and no one explained that – because she was on suicide watch – she was kept in the maternity ward all night and heard of women nearby giving birth to healthy babies. .

Mrs Bowden’s suffering continued at a follow-up appointment six weeks later when staff, who had not read her file, asked: ‘Where is your baby?’

Her story was just one of 4,000 entries submitted to the survey, many of which came from women who had experienced a traumatic hospital birth.

Last week, a committee chairing the inquiry ruled that these experiences were ‘unacceptable, distressing and avoidable’. The final report included 43 recommendations for the NSW Health Minister to consider.

Naomi Bowden had a stillborn daughter in 2009 and says the way she was treated in hospital was traumatizing

Pictured: Naomi Bowden giving evidence at the inquest in September

In her submission last September, Ms Bowden said she was given medication for depression during her pregnancy, but otherwise it was a by-the-book pregnancy.

On the morning of November 4, 2009, she went into labor and went to Wollongong Hospital with her husband, Clint.

Feeling calm and relaxed, she gave the midwife a copy of her birth plan, which had been drawn up during an appointment with the hospital’s head midwife.

By 7 p.m., her blood pressure had risen, so hospital staff checked the baby’s heart rate by cardiotocography and assured her that the baby was “fine.”

“The next moment I knew the clerk had entered the room to investigate further,” she said.

“He told me he had to check on the baby and wanted to perform a ROT.”

ROT stands for ‘right occiput transverse’, meaning Bella was looking towards the right side of the pelvis, instead of looking backwards as she should have been – but the clerk did not explain that to Mrs Bowden.

When she agreed to the procedure, she didn’t realize that it would involve inserting his hand to physically turn the baby’s head, or that it would be “one of the most painful experiences I have ever experienced.”

The hospital staff continued to monitor Bella’s heart rate, but they felt the labor was not progressing and said they would need forceps or a vacuum cleaner to get her out.

“I couldn’t push the baby out and felt like I was sucking her back up after my contractions,” Mrs Bowden said.

‘Nothing was explained to me in detail and as far as I know the baby’s heartbeat was fine.’

Naomi Bowden broke down as she gave evidence at the inquiry last year (pictured)

Bella was born at 8:45 p.m. and the staff helped her husband cut the umbilical cord, but he noticed that it was not coiled as it should have been – it looked flat, as if it had been crushed.

“Could Bella’s rotation have compressed her cord?” These are answers we never got,” her submission read.

The situation then turned from shambolic to horrific.

The hospital staff initially did not realize that Bella was not crying or moving when they handed her to Mrs Bowden – she was pale, limp and unresponsive.

The staff suddenly grabbed Bella and hospital staff began resuscitating her on the bed next to Mrs. Bowden.

“She was rushed out of the room as doctors flew by her side and I was left to deliver the afterbirth,” she said.

‘The nurse told me to jump in the shower as I would most likely go to the NICU unit or possibly be flown to Sydney. ‘

By the time Mrs. Bowden got out of the shower, Bella was dead.

‘I fell to the ground broken, my husband fell to the ground and cried. What just happened? How did this happen?’ she asked.

They were escorted to the NICU, where they were greeted by a nurse who was “loud, abrupt, rude and disrespectful” and did not seem to know why the couple was there.

When she was finally able to see and hold Bella, she said it was horrible because she still had tubes coming out of her mouth.

The pediatrician did not communicate with the registrar and would not sign the death certificate, which meant the coroner was called and told that Bella’s death was “unexplained.”

“We were told that the police would come and take Bella’s body to the coroner’s office in Sydney for an autopsy, but we didn’t really have a say,” she recalled.

“It was disturbing when your baby was taken from you by police officers and placed in a cooler.

“We had to identify the body of our baby, who I had just born, to the police.”

No one at the hospital comforted her, tried to explain Bella’s death or helped her understand the situation at all, she said.

Weeks later, just before her six-week postnatal appointment, Ms Bowden was sent a stack of PDFs with a note on the front saying: ‘FYI I haven’t read these yet so I can’t give you any feedback.’

During the meeting, the consultant midwife spoke about the documents and explained that the antidepressants Mrs Bowden was taking could cause oxygen deprivation in infants.

“She implied that this happened to Bella and that’s why she died,” Bowden said.

“We left the meeting because we could not function… Because of my mental health and the medications I require, I have jeopardized the health and well-being of my baby.”

Two years later, in 2011, they received Bella’s autopsy results and discovered the obstetrician was wrong.

The baby did not die as a result of medications; the situation was as Mrs. Bowden had imagined: she had asphyxiated as a result of a prolonged second-stage labor.

A complaint was filed with the Healthcare Complaints Committee, but this did not proceed to a formal investigation.

“I feel like it’s so unfair because if so many things had been handled differently, I would have been a different person,” she said.

“It affects my overall health even to this day.”

Health Minister Ryan Park called the report “sobering” and now has three months to respond to the commission’s 43 recommendations.