In heartbreaking testimony, a woman whose placenta ruptured after she was sent home from a maternity clinic, described how she later stripped naked in a Dora Nginza Hospital waiting room to show nurses how blood was pouring from her body, to get them to help her.
Princess Mvambi-Ngceyisa, 31, and her husband Buzwe Ngceyisa, 38, are suing the Eastern Cape health department for damages over the death of their baby, and this week she told the Port Elizabeth High Court of her devastating ordeal.
Her baby boy was still alive when doctors did the first scan but died minutes later, before he could be delivered by emergency C-section.
Mvambi-Ngceyisa said the baby would have been her second child and her first son.
She regularly attended the antenatal clinic in Zwide and her due date was at the end of April 2010.
“On April 4 I had a pain in my abdomen and my feet were swollen. I went with my husband to the maternity clinic [at] Dora Nginza Hospital.
“A nurse arrived. She asked the guy who was mopping the floor to put me on the foetal heart rate monitor.
“He couldn’t get a heartbeat. She couldn’t get a heartbeat.
“Then she wiped my belly with a washcloth and after that she found it. She told me the baby was in distress. She said he wanted to come out.”
Mvambi-Ngceyisa said the nurse had told her she was in labour and would give birth around 5am the next day.
“My husband, Buzwe, asked about my blood pressure. They sounded surprised. They said: ‘Oh, we didn’t take it’.”
She said after the nurses took her blood pressure and a urine sample, both results were written on her file in red.
“It was the first time anything was written in my file in red. Those numbers will forever be engraved in my mind: 186/153.
“But even after that, the nurses said there was no doctor available. ‘You are just going to sit here and be bored,’ they said.”
They had blood pressure pills and told her to take them.
“I was confused and in so much pain. My husband first argued with the nurses. [A] nurse told him they don’t keep people they can’t help.”
Once she was home, Mvambi-Ngceyisa took a bath, put on her pyjamas and went to bed.
“Around 11[pm] I woke up and went to the bathroom. I thought the baby was coming but I was bleeding heavily.”
She was rushed to Dora Nginza by family members while her husband stayed behind to look after their other child.
“When I got there the nurses told me: ‘You are not the first person to bleed, just sit down’.”
She waited for close to half an hour.
“It was only when I took off my robe and exposed my naked body that they saw the blood just pouring out.”
She was rushed to an examination room.
“Suddenly there were a lot of doctors. One did a scan and said I must have an emergency C-section. [It] showed my baby was still alive.
“At this stage the doctor was my only hope . . . I was praying for my boy. Then he did a second scan. He said: ‘There is no heartbeat’.”
Mvambi-Ngceyisa slipped into a coma and woke up only the next morning.
It was then she learnt the words “placental abruption”.
“A nurse came into the room and said my baby had died but he was still inside me. She said I must now deliver the baby.”
Mvambi-Ngceyisa borrowed a phone to call her husband, who had been trying to find out where she was.
“Losing our son destroyed him. He cried like a child.”
Mvambi-Ngceyisa was in the high care unit for five days until she was allowed to go home to bury her baby.
“We had named him Anikwa. He weighed 2.9kg. He was a plump baby. If you didn’t know he was dead you would have thought he was sleeping.
“I never thought I would have to bury my child.
“I was so looking forward to meeting him.”
When they returned from the funeral her husband shaved off all his hair.
“It was his sacrifice. We are of the Rastafarian faith – we maintain and grow our hair until the day we die.”
She and her husband returned to Dora Nginza to see the hospital psychologist.
“She wrote in her notes that we were disappointed. We were not disappointed – we were destroyed.
“Only one doctor ever came to apologise to me.
“She looked at my file and said: ‘I am so sorry’.
“I feel my husband should have done more . . . now there is a distance between us. I don’t trust him with the children anymore,” she said.
The couple have since had two more children.
“I got pregnant almost immediately after we lost our son. It was a little girl. I couldn’t connect with her. I was still longing for my other child.
“The fourth one was a boy. I didn’t want another baby.
“When I had a thought of taking their lives, I knew I had to get help.”
Mvambi-Ngceyisa is still on anti-depressants.
Buzwe Ngceyisa said he had been terrified when the clinic nurses sent his wife home.
He said he couldn’t go to the hospital with her as he had to look after their oldest baby.
It was only later he had received the call from his wife telling him the news.
“I just broke down. I couldn’t say anything to her.
“I kept asking myself why I was not man enough to protect my boy.
“I should have fought more that day. Maybe it would have helped if I got physical, grabbed someone.
“I wanted to do something to show my grief. To share my wife’s loss. Shaving my head was all I could think of.
“When I look at my offspring I always think there should be four. It is a terrible feeling.”
State attorney Ockert Lategan led no evidence to counteract the allegations of gross negligence.
Advocate Neil Paterson, acting with Francois Swanepoel for the couple, argued it was a case of “gross substandard care”.
“All the rules and guidelines were broken, with tragic consequences,” he said.
Acting judge Lee-Anne Ah Shene reserved judgment.