Woman who lost 44 pints of blood calls for more donations

Natasha Pollock is pushing for more people to donate blood

A woman who lost 44 pints of blood in an emergency C-section, is pushing for more people to donate blood.

Natasha Pollock was given one of the biggest blood transfusions in the UK after she gave birth at the Worcestershire Royal Hospital in 2015.

She said staff struggled to source enough suitable blood.

"Every drop from every available source had been biked in, driven in, helicoptered in and there was nothing left in the county," she said.

At the time, Mrs Pollock, from Stratford-upon-Avon, was expecting her third child and said she had suffered "a little bleed at home" before going into hospital.

Natasha Pollock gave birth to her third child in 2015

However, she then bled a lot more and had to undergo an emergency Caesarean, because she had suffered from a rare condition in which the placenta had grown through the uterine wall.

After the surgery, Mrs Pollock said her husband looked horrified and told her: "The baby is fine - you, however, gave us a night to remember."

Mrs Pollock had herself donated blood on several occasions, but had to stop before she became pregnant with her first child, as she "kept passing out".

However, she has since been getting friends and family to donate and wants her story to inspire others to give blood.

Last year, due to a supply shortage, the NHS issued an amber alert, restricting the amount of blood used in hospitals for almost a month

"If people keep thinking it's just there for everyone to take then we're always going to run out," Ms Pollock said.

"They say it takes just an hour to do, but in real life... it's actually only about six to eight minutes to actually do the donation."

Earlier this week, Mrs Pollock went back to the hospital that saved her and her son Oliver's life.

"It was so emotional, I'd never gone back into a theatre room so I found that quite difficult," the mother-of-three said.