A young mother who suffered six strokes just nine days after giving birth has told a parliamentary inquiry that medical staff were too busy to follow up on her pleas for help in the days leading up to the episode.
Cassidi-Rae Amosa was discharged from a regional hospital two days after giving birth to her third daughter, Rory, in 2019.
Cassidi-Rae Amosa with daughters Nova (left) Tilly (middle) and Rory (right).Credit:
The birth was complicated by her skyrocketing blood pressure and then, following a two-hour labour, news that her placenta had split and become caught.
She told the sixth and final hearing of the NSW birth trauma inquiry on Monday that, after failed attempts to remove the remaining placenta by pressing down on her stomach, a doctor manually removed it by sticking her arm in her vagina without her consent.
“I was violated. There’s no other word for it,” Amosa told the inquiry. “Quite frankly, it still gives me nightmares and flashbacks.”
The trauma didn’t end there. Amosa expressed her concerns about her persistent high blood pressure while on the maternity ward, telling her doctors her previous two pregnancies had been induced due to pre-eclampsia, but said she was told it would regulate itself.
She said she requested help from the hospital’s antenatal care team in the days following her discharge, as had occurred after her first two children were born. Despite being told a midwife would “be there in a few days”, no one came.
On June 5, nine days after giving birth, she took a three-hour shift at her family’s cleaning business but had to stop when her vision became impaired, and she felt tingling in her mouth and fingers.
That was the first of six strokes Amosa said she believed could have been prevented if she knew her high blood pressure put her at risk and medical staff had taken her concerns seriously.
“How did I have a stroke, I [was] 21?” she told the inquiry. “I would’ve loved to have some kind of information about what I could do, how I could have stopped it.”
“I had so many concerns [about] my blood pressure, and they were dismissed.”
The now 26-year-old said she had regained 95 per cent of her function and has returned to work, but the experience has left her with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and a distrust of medical professionals.
“At 21 years old, I had to teach myself to walk, talk, I had to depend on family and teach myself to complete daily tasks like shower, go to the toilet,” she said. “I appreciate every day I have on earth with my babies, but it still doesn’t stop the trauma and the challenges I still have to face every day.”
Another woman, Larissa Palamara, told the Monday hearing that doctors performed an emergency caesarean to deliver her stillborn daughter without telling her that her baby was dead.
Although the ordeal happened more than 25 years ago, she said her treatment as a 19-year-old mother had left her with lasting scars.
“I was described by my primary care midwife as a neurotic first-time mother-to-be … she singled me out to all of her colleagues and stated that I was a prime example of why teenagers shouldn’t get themselves pregnant,” she said.
The inquiry, an Australian-first, received more than 4000 submissions, including thousands from women who had experienced birth trauma.
The upper house committee, chaired by Animal Justice Party MLC Emma Hurst, is due to report by early June.
NSW Health Deputy Secretary Deborah Willcox told the inquiry on Monday that she had “been moved personally and professionally” by the stories shared during it and issued an apology to mothers whose experiences “didn’t meet the expectation for the care they should have received”.
“If there is an upside to any of this, some of the information we’ve heard and the stories that have been shared have really strengthened our resolve on the reforms we’ve set sail on,” she said.
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