A devastated mother has opened up about the moment her premature baby was decapitated during birth, and how the doctor reattached his head so she could hold him for the first time.
Laura Gallazzi, 24, was 25 weeks pregnant when her baby baby, named Steven, at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee in March 2014.
In a new interview with BBC, Laura says that whilst the doctor was forcing her to push her baby out, before her womb had dilated to 10cm, she heard a ‘pop’.
“The next word I heard was ‘right push again’. And I’m thinking to myself ‘why am I pushing again? I’ve done it’,” she recalled.
“I thought I’d done it. Then a couple of minutes later, it’s ‘oh, you’re going to be put to sleep’.”
When she woke up, a nurse told Laura that her baby boy had died.
“I remember completely losing it,” she said. “I was absolutely distraught. And then I blacked out again.”
A doctor ended up telling Laura that Steven’s head was decapitated during birth, and that it was still inside of her. She would need to have a caesarean to get it out.
After a doctor reattached his head to his body, Laura didn’t want to see him at first, “because I didn’t know what I was going to be looking at.
“But the doctor, she was really lovely. She said, ‘it’s alright’. Her words were ‘I’ve fixed him’.”
A medical tribunal ruled that Dr Laxman’s decision to attempt a vaginal delivery rather than a caesarean section was mistaken and led to Steven’s decapitation.
The doctor was at the end of a 24-hour split shift that night. She has since been ruled fit to practice and return to work.
This article originally appeared on New Idea.
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