Norah Bassett was hours old when she died in 2019, after multiple failings in her care. What can be learned from her heartbreaking loss?
f Charlotte Bassett had known that her daughter Norah’s life would be numbered in hours and minutes, not decades and years, she’d never have left her side. But she didn’t. So Charlotte went to have a shower after Norah’s birth on 12 April 2019. When she came out of the shower, a junior doctor was assessing Norah, who was being looked after by her father, James Bassett. The doctor gave Norah the all-clear, and left them alone.county hospital in Winchester was busy that evening.
Norah died shortly before midnight. “The scream I let out,” says Charlotte, softly. “They do it really well on TV sometimes.”Services Safety Investigations Body , which investigates patient safety in English hospitals, produced a report into Norah’s care in 2020. One sentence leaped out to Charlotte and James. “An upper airway event may have contributed to the baby’s collapse.” In other words, it was possible that Charlotte might have smothered her daughter.
But to the trust’s head of midwifery, the 7 March meeting felt like a personal attack. She left in tears. Six weeks later, on 21 April 2019, along with the joint deputy heads of midwifery and one consultant midwife, she made a formal complaint of bullying and harassment against Pitman. At the trust’s request, Pitman underwent behavioural coaching and mediation with his complainants. Due to poor mental health – he says the pressure of the investigation made him near-suicidal – he would not return to work until September 2020. Within two years, his 20-year career as an obstetrician and gynaecologist was over.fter the Bassetts received the HSSIB report, Charlotte “many times wanted to kill myself,” she says. The report identified failings in Norah’s care.
For midwives, birth is a physiological process from which the majority of women and babies emerge unscathed. For doctors, more likely to attend high-risk mothers, a more medicalised, cautious approach is advisable. It is for this reason that doctor-overseen deliveries. Throughout the 19th century, doctors pushed midwives out, and by the mid-20th century, most women gave birth in hospitals.
“Ibex Gale categorically refutes any suggestion that its selection of witnesses in Mr Pitman’s investigation was unfair,” says an Ibex Gale spokesperson. “The investigator’s choice of witnesses focused on members of staff that Mr Pitman worked with on a regular basis and on those working relationships that were fundamental to patient safety, the cohesion of the department and the effective delivery of the service.
“He was the most gentle, lovely, approachable person that I ever worked with at Winchester,” says Joy Danby, former maternity support worker at The coroner determined that “none of those obstetricians involved in the birth had experience of this kind of history or the risk of rupture that this posed. Had they known and conveyed this information to Lucy she may have chosen to have an elective caesarean.” However, the coroner also said that Howell might have died of an amniotic fluid embolism even if she’d had a C-section, meaning that her death may not have been avoidable.
Howell opted for a vaginal birth without being fully informed of the risks. Every day, pregnant women make similar choices, sometimes influenced by a “normal birth” ideology that is promoted in antenatal groups, by social media influencers and in hospitals all over the country.In every maternity inquiry that has concluded since 2010, investigators found that a pro-“normal” birth culture contributed to avoidable deaths of women and babies.
In September 2023, Charlotte and James saw Pitman on the news. He was taking HHFT to an employment tribunal, alleging that he waswith 1,900 members. Some were so worried about being spotted by hospital managers that they came in disguise. “What does that say?” Haikney observes. “He’d already gone. So he clearly wasn’t the problem.”
On 4 January 2024, the trust’s CEO, Alex Whitfield, gave an interview to the BBC. “This is a safe place to have your baby,” she said. A midwife working that day tells me that she was in tears because she was so overworked. “It takes a lot to break me,” she says, “but I was ready to walk out.”
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