Mom claims negligence in newborn’s death

YVONNE WEBB

The joy of her child’s birth turned sorrowful for a Point Fortin couple, Chaz Gomez and Wendell Weekes, whose baby died at the San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH) on Wednesday, three days after the mother gave birth.

Although the family are yet to receive an official autopsy report, they are claiming their baby died from meconium. It means death by swallowing one’s own faeces which enters the lungs and hampers breathing.

The 20-year-old first-time mother, who is crying negligence, is contending that if doctors and nurses at the SFGH had only heeded her plea to induce labour or deliver via Caesarean section, her baby would not have gone into distress. Yesterday, Gomez and her husband were sadly preparing for their son’s funeral.

Gomez, of Egypt Village, Point Fortin, wept yesterday as she recalled how she was ignored for the seven days she spent at the hospital and when the pangs of labour came on, she begged nurses to relieve her pain and save the life of her unborn child. Instead, Gomez said, she was told she was too young for a C-section and that she would have to “push it out naturally’. Taken to the labour ward, Gomez gave birth and the mother named her baby Jeremiah.

Accompanied yesterday by Weekes and his aunt, Ann Richardson, to register at the SFGH the baby’s birth and death, Gomez broke down in tears as she waited in a line among parents who had also gone to the institution to register their newborn’s birth. Weekes said that on the Wednesday before baby Jeremiah died, the incubator was opened and they were allowed to touch Jeremiah and pray with him. That was the only time he got to touch his child, as hours later, while on his way home after visiting hours, he got a call to come back to the hospital as the child died.

Richardson, Weekes’ aunt said, “this is negligence and soon as this (funeral) is over we are going to see attorney Anand Ramlogan (former AG) because something good has to come out of this. People are in this job for money, they have no human feelings.”