Nine months, no baby
Published:Sunday | March 6, 2011 | 12:00 AM
It happened almost 10 years ago, but Kamesha Russell remembers the horror of losing her baby at the Princess Margaret Hospital on the same day she gave birth like it was yesterday.
She checked into the St Thomas-based public hospital a few days ahead of her due date.
It would have been the first child for Russell, 21 at the time, and her husband. However, the baby did not leave the hospital with her parents, who had been married for less than a year.
Russell, vice-principal of the Calvary Basic School in Morant Bay, St Thomas, told our news team that in the wee hours of November 3, 2001, she went into labour and it felt like the baby was making its way down the birth canal.
Throughout the interview, Russell sported a bright smile, but beyond the beam lurked the pain of her past.
She was in a private room by herself and had to call for the nurses. She recalled calling for several minutes, not getting an answer. Russell then took matters into her own hands. She slid down from the bed and painfully made her way to the nursing station and told the two nurses that she thought the baby was coming.
She said she is of the view that the baby's head had actually exited the womb while she was walking. However, Russell alleged that the nurses did not believe her and sent her back to her room, and she complied. She could not get back up on the bed, she recounted, and so she sat on the edge of a chair in the room. "It took a while for them to come and tell me to walk to the delivery room.
"It was when I was up on the bed that she examined me and saw that the baby's head was actually down," she said.
'I was numb'
By this time, Russell said she was very tired and could hardly push. When the baby would not come on its own, the doctor was summoned. She recalled that he came quickly and was very professional. He managed to push on her stomach and get the baby out. "By this, I didn't know what pain was. I was numb," Russell remarked.
After the baby was delivered, Russell's recollection is that it was whisked away. Russell did not see her baby alive. After asking repeatedly, they took her to see the baby. Russell's firstborn was dead. "When I went over to the children's ward, they told me to sit down," recalled Russell, who said she regrets going to Princess Margaret to give birth.
Dr Cecil Batchelor, senior medical officer at the hospital, told our news team that he did not remember Russell's case.
"I really can't remember all the people who have grievances with the hospital. There are quite a number of them out there," Batchelor said.
Russell told our news team that the death certificate said the child died of asphyxia.
"I don't know if it is the baby-friendly hospital now. But I'm not going out there again, if I even have to take a loan," she vowed.
The couple retained a lawyer through her husband's company, but the case did not get off the ground because the medical records told a different story. "What was on record was not what happened," she claims.
Russell and her husband have two young daughters now, and that has helped to ease the pain.