Chyril Hutchinson had already lost six pregnancies when she reached 37 weeks of gestation with her daughter Ceniyah.
In February 2021, she was admitted to the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust hospital in England with high blood pressure. Doctors told her she needed an emergency C-section. But that same day, the hospital had six fewer midwives than necessary, and the surgery was postponed. The following day, a consultant decided to send her home and make her wait two more weeks. Chyril tried to explain her fear, her history, her desperation. The doctor raised her hand to silence her and told her: “I’m only here for emergencies”. Days later, an ultrasound confirmed that her baby had died.
An internal hospital investigation acknowledged that staff had failed to monitor the baby’s growth, a sign that could have indicated the need to deliver early. Even so, the report avoided confirming whether those failures directly caused Ceniyah’s death. “My daughter should be here with me”, Chyril said. The same hospital had already paid more than 30 million dollars in obstetric negligence lawsuits in a single year.
