'I still weep for the baby boy I lost'

Heidi Rose Elliott keeps a picture of her son, Kurtis, on the table of her home. He would be 16 now but died in 2009 after being starved of oxygen during his birth at Yeovil District Hospital.

"It's turned my life upside down," said Heidi, describing how she still struggles with post-natal stress and anxiety. "I have OK days. I have very sad days. I still cry about it. I still get upset every birthday."

The hospital's maternity services remain under scrutiny, having temporarily closed last year after safety concerns were raised by the Care Quality Commission, and they are now part of an government-commissioned review to be published on Tuesday.

Dr Melanie Iles, chief medical officer at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, said: "I want to say how sorry I am to Heidi and her family."

An internal investigation found that Heidi's midwife, who had been out of practice, failed to interpret the monitor that showed her baby was in distress.

The investigation also criticised the registrar, who also failed to recognise the abnormal reading on the monitor.

And it found that the experienced midwifery coordinator was delivering another child at the time.

Dr Iles added: "We really want to do our best every time to make sure people have safe and compassionate care and when things go wrong, we act on those as quickly as possible."

Heidi had three further children, but not at Yeovil District Hospital.

She remains critical of the hospital and what happened to her there.

"It was just way too traumatic, and I just did not trust Yeovil after everything, there was no way I was going to go back there and put any of my babies at risk," she said.

The BBC first revealed widespread concerns about Yeovil in February and has since spoken to dozens more women who have reported poor care, raising the question of whether opportunities were missed to improve the service.

The BBC has spoken to dozens of women who say they experienced poor care at Yeovil.

In 2017, the hospital asked the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology to inspect its maternity care.

The college said it was impressed with the "dedication" of staff and declared the unit "safe".

But it also found the maternity unit had a "higher than expected medical intervention rate" and that consultants needed a "greater active involvement" on labour wards.

Bosses at Yeovil insist they took action, but the same concern was raised just two years later, in 2019, by an investigator turned whistleblower.

Amanda Ford worked for the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch in the South West from 2019 to 2020.

"Yeovil was one of my first units I was asked to go and investigate," said Amanda.

She said there was not enough consultant oversight, along with the use of locum staff that "didn't seem to be orientated or supervised adequately".

In 2024, the Care Quality Commission made the same point about a lack of consultant cover in a damning report, that led to the temporary closure of the Yeovil unit.

Dr Iles responded: "We need to ensure that our consultants are there at peak times of activity.

"That means being present for extended hours on labour ward; it means coming in when they're on call from home.

"It's something we're passionate about. We've really set the standards and expectations and are monitoring it really carefully."

The trust said there are now eight obstetric consultant posts at Yeovil, three more than in 2017, and it has strengthened its clinical leadership team as well as employing more midwives.

"In addition, we have changed the consultant obstetric rota to ensure there is extended senior presence on labour ward and are working with middle grade doctors and midwives to ensure that they have early support from senior obstetricians when required."

Daisy gave birth to her son Finn at Yeovil hospital in 2020 and is one of the many women the BBC has been in contact with.

"It was a really difficult time," she said. "In my head I felt like I wasn't managing."

After giving birth, some of Daisy's placenta was left inside her.

She felt the treatment options to resolve this were not properly explained and now knows that the placenta was not removed during a manual examination.

As a result, she ended up very ill, and eventually needed several rounds of surgery

"It kind of just carried on, with me feeling sick, anxious, bleeding, not able to properly care for my son or enjoy it for what it was and constantly ringing GPs, midwives, healthcare professionals, to try and get someone to listen to me."

She believes what happened could have affected her chances of having a larger family.

"At the end of November last year, we found out we were expecting again.

"Unfortunately, when we went for our 12-week scan, it was found that I'd had a miscarriage.

"Because we fell pregnant so easily with our first baby and we fell pregnant so easily with our second baby as well, for me that signals that there was something wrong with the uterus, rather than the fertility side."

In an apology to Daisy, Dr Iles said: "This was difficult and traumatic for her and clearly had an impact on her in the days and months after and an ongoing impact on her ability to have children."

She insisted Yeovil's maternity services are safe, and said they wanted to create an environment "where if something is not right, women are listened to and they're seen and the issues are dealt with much earlier on."

Yeovil said it would be taking the recommendations from Baroness Amos' review into consideration.

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