Her baby was decapitated during childbirth

WHEN Laura Gallazzi felt her waters break at only 25 weeks into her pregnancy, the first-time mum was terrified her baby son was about to be born hugely premature.

But what was to happen in hospital was far more horrific than she could have imagined — as the doctor battling to deliver her child accidentally decapitated him.

The baby had been stuck in the breech position and as the medic tugged at his legs to try and get him out — instead of performing a C-section — his head broke off in Laura’s womb.

Two other doctors did then carry out a C-section — but only to recover the baby’s head.

Speaking exclusively for the first time about the horror that shocked the nation, Laura now lays the blame squarely at the door of Dr Vaishnavy Laxman — although she has since been cleared to continue practising.

Traumatised Laura, 34, says: “She butchered my son. How could this happen in this day and age?”

She also believes she was duped into initially forgiving Dr Laxman because she did not explain how the baby had died.

Recalling her nightmare at Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital, she tells how she woke afterward in a room for mothers who have suffered loss in pregnancy, with her tearful sister Louise by her side.

Dr Laxman came in and told her the news her baby had died. Yet devastated Laura assumed this was simply because he was 25 weeks premature.

She says: “Dr Laxman sat to the edge of my bed. She told me Steven hadn’t made it. I told her, ‘Don’t worry, these things happen.’ I thought it was because I was only 25 weeks. I didn’t know something untoward had happened. I even held her hand. I told her I forgave her.”

But nothing was to prepare her for the chilling truth, told to her by another doctor later in the day, which would then take here trauma to a whole new level.

Laura says: “My son was dead and then they told me he had been decapitated. I was screaming, My poor baby.

“Why didn’t they give me the C-section in the first place? Instead of having to carry it out to retrieve my son’s head?

“If I didn’t have tubes and needles in me, attaching me to a machine, I don’t know what I would’ve done.

“I was inconsolable. I thought they were going to just bring in a body. I didn’t want to be left with that memory.”

Only three babies in the world are known to have succumbed to such a sickening fate and Laura says: It’s like something from medieval times. I never imagined this would be my experience of birth.”

It had taken Laura a year of trying to fall pregnant with partner Steven McCusker, now 30, and they couldn’t wait to be parents.

She says: “It was just after my 30th birthday. We had been together a while and just decided to see if it would happen.

“I was over the moon when I found out at 20 weeks that I was expecting a son.

“We had everything ready — a pram, baby monitors, sterilising unit and so on. We had little outfits and everything.”

Her pregnancy was plain-sailing, save for her being diagnosed with Rhesus disease — a condition where antibodies in a pregnant woman’s blood destroy her baby’s blood cells, but which can be managed with injections.

She says: “I was closely monitored and told my baby was growing strong. I’ll never forget the first time I felt him inside me. I was lying on the couch, it felt like butterflies — like wee pockets of air, wee bubbly bits. It was so exciting.

“We had so much to look forward to and it was all getting so real.”

But at 25 weeks pregnant, her journey took a sudden turn as her waters broke.

She was rushed to hospital but then straight into theatre after she also suffered a prolapsed umbilical cord — when it drops through the cervix into the vagina ahead of the baby and can become trapped against the infant’s body during delivery.

Laura, who worked as a carer for the British Red Cross, said: “I felt petrified, I had no idea what was going on but knew it was big because all of a sudden there were about 15 medics around me.

“I heard them saying something about two to three centimetres. Then I heard something about there still being a heartbeat, but it was very low.

Continues:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7196277...
By Ruth Warrander

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