An Edinburgh woman has opened up about the traumatic experience of losing a child as more mums call on the Scottish government to keep their election promise to give mothers who miscarry their own ward away from newborns.
According to the Daily Record, Annabelle Santini suffered the heartbreak of losing five babies and was forced to listen to the sounds of newborn cries as she mourned the losses.
40-year-old Annabelle remarried five years ago and was keen to add to her family. She already had two children, Isla and Hector, from the previous marriage but wanted her and her new husband to have a biological child together.
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However, this route to happiness was marred by tragedy with three early miscarriages, an ectopic pregnancy and a loss at three months before welcoming their new baby Matilda in August.
The first of the five losses happened when she was just six weeks pregnant and she was sent to the maternity ward at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary,
She said: “I had never experienced a miscarriage but I knew where they were sending me because that’s where I went to have Isla and Hector.
“It is quite a difficult thing to go through what we were experiencing and pass people happily pregnant. I remember speaking to my husband and saying could we not have a separate entrance.
“It felt very cruel. It is a traumatic thing to put a woman through.”
But she went through the same thing twice and then an ectopic pregnancy.
She said: “I collapsed at home and was initially sent to A&E where they discovered the ectopic pregnancy and said I needed emergency surgery.
“I was transferred to the maternity unit and woke up after surgery to remove the fallopian tube and the pregnancy in a room right across from the maternity ward.
“All I could hear was new babies and new mums.
"I have a clear memory of getting up to go to the loo and there was a new mum and dad leaving the maternity ward carrying a car seat with their new baby in it.”
In tears, she continued: “They were over the moon but I had just lost my baby. It is one of those things you can’t quite believe can still be happening in 2022.
“We talk so much about mental health nowadays – it doesn’t make sense that we would have the two opposite ends of the spectrum for care in the same place.”
Annabelle’s fifth pregnancy ended just before her three-month-scan. She said: “I couldn’t face delivering the baby myself so I went for surgery and was put in a day surgery unit at St John’s Livingston, thankfully avoiding the maternity unit.”
As the couple welcomed their child Matilda, they had to return to the same hospital where the other pregnancies had ended. Annabelle says the trauma of these previous heartbreaks affected her. .
Annabelle said: ”My husband went to book me in but when he came back he couldn’t find me.
“I had hidden myself in the corner. I didn’t want to sit in the waiting room because I didn’t know what the women in there were going through.
“In my head, I was aware not every woman in the waiting room would be waiting for a happy event.”
Annabelle added: “Matilda is 10 months old and causing mayhem. But we feel very blessed she is here.
“I welcomed my older two children with no complications and never really appreciated what some women have to go through.
“Miscarriage is still a taboo subject but the more we talk openly the more chance we have to help other women.”
