A mother of premature twins has told the Covid inquiry she did not feel like she was treated as a parent after giving birth in the early stages of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Tamsin Mullen said she was kept in a side room for 27 hours after giving birth by caesarean section while her sons were taken to neonatal intensive care.<\/p>\n
She said \u201crigid\u201d visiting restrictions meant that, for the next month, only one parent was allowed to visit her newborn babies at a time.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0We needed the hospital to understand we were a family,\u00a0\u00bb she told the inquiry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t feel like a mother and father to our children in the way we should have done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Covid inquiry has been taking evidence about the impact on maternity services as part of its third section, or module, which is investigating the impact on the NHS and healthcare.<\/p>\n
Ms Mullen, a mother of three, was giving first-hand \u00ab\u00a0impact\u00a0\u00bb evidence on behalf of 13 pregnancy, baby and parent organisations.<\/p>\n
She found out she was expecting twin boys in 2019 and was considered high-risk. When pregnant with her first child, she was diagnosed with preeclampsia – a condition which can cause high blood pressure and lead to serious complications.<\/p>\n
Her pregnancy was being monitored closely with scans every week because of concerns about the development of one of the babies.<\/p>\n
Initially she said her husband was able to come with her to scanning appointments, but as Covid spread in March 2020, he was forced to wait in the car park outside after driving 50 miles from their home to the nearest hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just before the first lockdown came into effect,\u00a0\u00bb she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very nervous. It was very difficult to do that alone knowing [the pregnancy] was high-risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
In April 2020, Ms Mullen\u2019s two sons were born prematurely, at 34 weeks, by caesarean section.<\/p>\n
Her husband was able to be with her in the operating theatre and then in the recovery room for an hour, before being told Covid restrictions meant he had to leave.<\/p>\n
Their two young boys then spent a total of 31 days in neonatal intensive care before they could be discharged.<\/p>\n
Ms Mullen said Covid restrictions meant only one parent could be with them at a time, even after they had been moved to a single room away from other babies.<\/p>\n
The hospital had shut off access to side rooms used for breastfeeding and Ms Mullen said she was told to use a toilet to express milk, something she did not want to do because of the infection risk.<\/p>\n
She said the restrictions were \u201cbaffling\u201d when both parents lived together and were driving to hospital each morning in the same car.<\/p>\n
She was looking after both babies by herself in intensive care when hospital staff from outside the unit told her they had tested positive for a bacterial infection called MRSA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was holding our son who was on oxygen at the time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in a state of shock so didn\u2019t really say very much. They [the staff] left me and I was there on my own.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know what it all meant, so I really panicked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later a doctor explained the form of MRSA involved was a less serious type that could be treated with soap and water.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0We didn\u2019t feel like we were being treated as parents. It was like we were visitors, and we were visiting two patients,\u00a0\u00bb she said.<\/p>\n
The inquiry later heard from Jenny Ward, the chief executive of the Lullaby Trust, who chairs the pregnancy and baby charities network.<\/p>\n
She said that, before Covid, most parents would have had 24\/7 unrestricted access to their young children in neonatal intensive care.<\/p>\n
It was not until April 2022 in England and Scotland, and May 2022 in Wales, that the guidance reverted back.<\/p>\n
She said the decision to suspend visiting from March 2020 for a large number of maternity services had been \u201chugely damaging\u201d.<\/p>\n
Restrictions during antenatal scans had a particularly negative impact on some women who had to receive bad news about the health of their baby on their own, she added.<\/p>\n
For much of the pandemic, pregnant women were often told they were only allowed to have a birthing partner present when in so-called \u201cactive\u201d labour.<\/p>\n
As a result, some were left alone in individual birthing rooms without anyone else to \u201cadvocate for them, to say they seem to be in extreme pain\u201d, Ms Ward told the inquiry.<\/p>\n
After giving birth, others had to recover from surgery in hospital while looking after a newborn baby without their partners able to be present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A mother of premature twins has told the Covid inquiry she did not feel like she was treated as a parent after giving birth in the early stages of the pandemic. Tamsin Mullen said she was kept in a side room for 27 hours after giving birth by caesarean section while her sons were taken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9022","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}