'My unborn baby stopped kicking, nobody believed me'

Beth Cooper and Tom Coxhead's son was stillborn on Christmas Day 2022

When Beth Cooper's unborn baby stopped kicking, she said she made multiple trips to hospital but was sent home with staff telling her that she and her baby were fine.

Her son, Felix, was stillborn on Christmas Day 2022 at Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, West Sussex.

Ms Cooper, a former neonatal nursery nurse at the hospital, said: "It felt like I was screaming into an empty tunnel and that nobody was believing me."

Emma Chambers, director of midwifery at the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital, said it was committed to reviewing every point raised in Ms Cooper's complaint.

'Internal instinct'

Describing her pregnancy, Ms Cooper said her son would be "up all night kicking".

"He was a very ferocious little boy. And then I noticed that he wasn't kicking as much," she said.

After suffering from headaches and vomiting, Ms Cooper said she used her "professional knowledge" and went to hospital three times but was sent home.

On Christmas Eve, she went again.

"It was just this internal instinct that he wasn't alright, or he was already gone. I started walking, ended up running, got to the hospital and that's when they confirmed that he'd died," she said.

"I just remember saying to them, 'you told me he was fine. I've been in every day, and you've sent me home'. I remember saying that over and over."

The trust runs hospitals in Brighton, Haywards Heath, Worthing and Chichester

Ms Cooper and Felix's father have backed a campaign for an independent review into maternity services at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, which runs hospitals in Brighton, Haywards Heath, Worthing and Chichester.

"It's not to scare people away from the trust because I worked there for so long. They do good work," she said.

"They can't bring back Felix, can't bring my son back, so you can't change what happened."

Her partner, Tom Coxhead, said he hoped it would encourage others to question the care they had received.

"We grow up trusting doctors, consultants – it's inherent, it's intrinsic to who we are as people, to trust those people," he said.

"But that trust has been broken due to lack of care, lack of compassion, and just a want of not listening."

Elizabeth Hutton, from charity Kicks Count, said the campaign aimed to reduce the UK's high rates of stillbirth and neonatal death by raising awareness of baby movements.

"The majority of people who had a stillbirth noticed a reduction in movements beforehand, that's what we're trying to get at," she said.

"You will have a lot of people for whom it is fine, but we don't want to miss that small window of opportunity that we have to save the baby."

Ms Chambers said anything learnt from reviewing the complaint would be used to "strengthen the care we provide to every family who uses our services".

She added: "Our maternity teams care deeply about what they do, and work incredibly hard to deliver safe care, but we will always seek to listen, and to make improvements, if we possibly can."