A Scots mum is calling on the Scottish Government to keep a pre-election promise that would give mothers who miscarry their own ward away from newborns and their families.
Louise Caldwell, who has suffered three miscarriages, had to deliver her baby in the regular labour suite - passing cooing new mums and dads as she went into the maternity ward.
In 2018-19, 4635 women in Scotland required inpatient treatment for a miscarriage.
The Daily Record has spoken to two such women today who back Louise's campaign - and want to see a government commitment to establish such wards by the end of next year met.
Annabelle's story
The heartbreak of losing five babies was compounded by the cruel way Annabelle Santini had to listen to the sound of newborn babies’ cries as she mourned.
Annabelle, 40, remarried five years ago and was keen to add to her family, She already had two children Isla, 12, and Hector, 10, from her first marriage but she wanted to give her husband his own biological child.
But her route to happiness was marred by tragedy with three early miscarriages, an ectopic pregnancy and a loss at three months before welcoming baby Matilda in August.
The first of her five losses happened when she was just six weeks pregnant and she was sent to the maternity unit 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.”
When the couple finally welcomed Matilda, they returned to the same hospital where four of their pregnancies had ended.
But the trauma of the 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.”
Sharon's story
Sharon Campbell had the chance of motherhood snatched from her three times and each time had to run the gauntlet of other happy parents cooing over their newborns.
The experiences have been so traumatic for Sharon she is scared to get pregnant.
But had there been a separate unit away from newborns, Sharon’s experience could have been very different.
She first became pregnant in 2016 but had a miscarriage of the baby she named Thomas at home in September that year.
However, afterwards she had to go into the early pregnancy clinic on the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital campus for blood tests.
She said: “That was the first traumatic experience. I had to go past pregnant people and, to this day, it still kills me.”
Her next pregnancy, less than a year later, ended in August 2017.
She was told she would need to go into hospital to deliver her daughter, Skye, at 13 weeks.
Sharon said: “The midwife sent me out the back door but I still saw new babies who had been born.
"It was not a good place for women like me to go through what I did.”
At the end of last year, Sharon found herself pregnant again but that, too, was to end in tragedy.
Describing having to go into hospital once more, she said: “It really hurt when I heard babies crying.
“I am 37 this year and I don’t think I can ever have a baby. I am scared to get pregnant now because I’m scared I would have to go through all that again.”
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