“I have five babies at home. Please don’t let me die.”
Laura-Jane Seaman, 36, was begging for her life after giving birth to her fifth child.
She died days before Christmas in 2022.
Now, an inquest has concluded her death was “avoidable” and “contributed to by neglect” during her treatment at Broomfield Hospital in Essex.
The labour had been straightforward, and Ms Seaman’s mum Sarah remembers how she seemed well in the hours afterwards. She had been able to breastfeed her new baby boy and was looking forward to getting out of hospital.
“We were going to have a McDonald’s breakfast – that’s what she did after the birth of every baby,” Sarah told Sky News.
But, suddenly, Ms Seaman started to feel unwell: “She at times was quite distressed, but at other times was calm. Just kept saying ‘I’m not right. I feel like I’m gushing’.”
The mum-of-five had suffered an internal bleed but despite being known to be at high risk of post-partum haemorrhage, her case wasn’t escalated.
Instead, she was treated for dehydration and given a biscuit. Her observations were handwritten on a cardiotocography print-out, rather than the chart which would have flagged her many warning signs.
Sarah wept in her living room as she remembered their final conversations.
“She said, ‘Mum, I’m dying’, and she told [the staff] so many times, ‘I’m dying. Help me’.”
Two days later, after multiple operations and cardiac arrests, Ms Seaman died.
This week, area coroner Sonia Hayes found she died because of “basic failings to recognise a loss of consciousness as a maternal collapse”.
She also found there was a failure to escalate her care to more senior staff, which would have triggered procedures that would have saved her life.
A spokesperson from the hospital trust extended their “sincerest sympathies and condolences to the family of Laura-Jane”. They added their focus since has “been on improving training to prevent this from happening again”.
For Ms Seaman’s mum and her eldest daughter Amie, the “basic” mistakes in her care are devastating.
Amie said: “At the time, we really believed [the staff] were doing all they could.”
Sarah added: “I thanked every member of staff that was in that room, I actually thanked them for giving us an extra two days with her.”
When asked how she feels now about the medical team who treated her daughter, she replied, “heartbroken”.
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For 20-year-old Amie and her younger siblings, they are now growing up without the “amazing mum” who she said “gave us the best childhood”.
She was caring and fun, Amie said – always singing and dancing.
“It’s been empty without her, and very difficult to watch my teenage sisters try and grow up and become adults without that support. And then [for] my brothers to be so young and possibly not remember her. It’s just awful.”
For Sarah, Ms Seaman was “a natural mother” whose “passion was her children”.
She said she also loved her job, working with adults with learning disabilities. She also volunteered with rough sleepers and cooked meals for local families who were struggling during the pandemic.
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Camilla Browne, a solicitor from Leigh Day who supported the family during the inquest, said Ms Seaman’s case was one of the worst she had been involved in due to the “significant amount of failings of just providing basic care”.
“It’s not the first time we’ve heard of something like this going wrong, especially in the last couple of years,” she said.
“So the maternity crisis is abhorrent. And I think it goes back to just doing the basic thing, taking basic vital observations, inputting them into the chart and doing good handovers and, you know, escalating when you need to escalate.”
Diane Sarkar, chief nursing and quality officer for Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We thank the coroner for her detailed review and have listened carefully to her comments and the evidence heard at inquest, all of which will inform our efforts to continue to improve maternity services at the Trust.”
