Early arrival: Dr Alice Ashby and Evie
(Picture: LAS)A pregnant doctor who had to be rushed to hospital when she went into premature labour has praised medics for helping to save her baby’s life.
Dr Alice Ashby said she had never been as terrified as when she started bleeding when she was just 30 weeks into her pregnancy.
She has a rare and life-threatening condition called vasa praevia that causes blood vessels to tear during birth.
The doctor had been booked to go into King’s College hospital, in Denmark Hill, 32 weeks into her pregnancy and for the baby to be delivered by caesarean section at 35 weeks.
But when she was in the bath with her two-year-old son, singing Hey Duggee’s “stick song”, she realised that things were starting to go badly wrong.
London Ambulance medics managed to get Dr Ashby, 41, from her home in Camberwell to King’s College hospital just 16 minutes after she and her husband Pete called 999.
Dr Ashby, 41, a psychiatrist at West London NHS trust who works in West Middlesex hospital A&E, said: “As soon as the call handler realised how dangerous the situation was, everything happened so quickly. An ambulance car and an ambulance arrived within minutes.
“I’ve never seen anything as impressive as the response, skill and compassion of the ambulance crew.”
She was taken straight to the labour ward and into an operating theatre. After a scan showed that neither she nor her baby was at immediate risk, the delivery was arranged for the following day.
“I would never have been able to get myself to hospital,” Dr Ashby added. “There is no way I could have done it without them.”
Her daughter Evie was born on April 4, more than two months’ early and weighing less than 4lb (1.72kg).
She finally came home several days ago after being cared for in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.
Paramedic Paddy Wright said: “As we arrived we were met by a clearly distressed and scared mum-to-be.
“After listening to her, and learning how serious her condition was, we knew we had to act quickly but safely.”
His colleague, emergency ambulance crew technician Rachel Spaulding, held Dr Ashby’s hand right up until she went into theatre.
They had been aided at LAS headquarters by call handler Chesie Piner and ambulance dispatcher Valerie Murphy.
Ms Spaulding said: “We just did everything we could for this patient who was scared and needed our help.”
Dr Ashby said the problem had been detected during her first scan. “At three months’ pregnant, I knew I had this condition where the placenta is growing right over the cervix – right over the way out for the baby,” she said.
She was told the placenta could move and that the problem might effectively solve itself. But she was also aware of the dangers.
“Any bleeding could be the baby’s blood vessel breaking,” she said. “The baby could run out of blood.”
She praised LAS and the hospital for prioritising her care, knowing the extent of the post-pandemic pressures that both face.
“I have had the most amazing experience,” she said. “I know things are not completely rosy [with the NHS backlog] but probably what we did see was the prioritisation of the most urgent stuff.”
Dr Fenella Wrigley, chief medical officer at LAS, said: “Everyone involved in Alice’s care listened to her concerns and while assessing and treating her with care and compassion. They recognised the urgency of the situation, communicated well and prioritised an extremely fast transfer.”
