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Woman stored baby’s remains in fridge after London hospital refused them


A London hospital has launched an investigation after a woman whose baby died in the womb had to deliver her son at home due to lack of beds and keep his remains in her fridge when A&E staff said they could not store them safely.

Laura Brody and her partner, Lawrence, said they were “tipped into hell” after being sent home by university hospital Lewisham to await a bed when told their baby no longer had a heartbeat but no beds were immediately available to give birth, the BBC reported.

Two days later, after waking up in severe pain, Brody, who was four months into her pregnancy, gave birth in agony on the toilet in their bathroom. “And it was then,” she told the broadcaster, “I saw it was a boy”.

The couple, who wanted investigative tests to be carried out at a later time, dialled 999 but were told it was not an emergency. They wrapped their baby’s remains in a wet cloth, placed him in a Tupperware box, and went to A&E where they were told to wait in the general waiting room, they said.

She was eventually taken into a bay and told she would require surgery to remove the placenta. But, with the waiting room hot and stuffy and staff refusing to store the remains or even look inside the Tupperware box, they decided as it got to midnight they had no option but for her partner to take their baby’s remains home.

Brody said the whole experience “felt so grotesque”.

“When things go wrong with pregnancy there are not the systems in place to help you, even with all the staff and their experts – and they are working really hard – the process is so flawed that it just felt like we had been tipped into hell,” she told Radio 4’s Today programme.

The case is said to have raised wider concerns among campaigners who argue that miscarriage care needs to be properly prioritised within hospitals including A&E.

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Source: The Guardian, 30 May 2022

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