Mother describes ‘chaos’ of her traumatic birth to get stillborn babies a legal identity

The details of this story may upset some readers.

A mother has described the "chaos" of the day her baby was decapitated during birth due to a doctor's error. Laura Gallazzi went into labour at 25 weeks pregnant in Dundee's Ninewells hospital in 2014. She said she was told there was "no cause for concern," but the next morning she discovered that her baby's umbilical cord has emerged from the womb. Gallazzi said that doctors told her to start pushing, but that she knew "something was wrong" and that after some time, she "felt a pop." As part of a new campaign to secure legal identities for stillborn babies, the mother told BBC Radio Scotland:

"I felt nothing between my legs, so I thought 'I've done it. I've done it. My son's here'. I didn't hear him crying but I wasn't too worried about that because I knew he was so small. "Then the room went into absolute chaos (...) The next word I heard was 'right push again'. And I'm thinking to myself 'why am I pushing again? I've done it'."

Gallazzi said that a few days prior, she had been told that she would likely have a C-section due to the baby's breech position. During the birth, she was only partially dilated. The mother said that after the room descended into chaos, she was put asleep. When she awoke, she was told by a nurse that her baby had died. Some time later, Gallazzi was then told by another doctor that her son had been decapitated. She was also informed that the baby's head was still inside of her and that surgery would be required to remove it. "The next thing I thought was 'I don't want to see him, don't bring him in here', because I didn't know what I was going to be looking at," said Gallazzi. "But the doctor, she was really lovely. She said, 'it's alright'. Her words were 'I've fixed him'." A medical tribunal earlier this year ruled that Dr Vaishnavy Laxman should not have attempted a vaginal birth to deliver Gallazzi's baby. The tribunal found that the doctor was mistaken, but that she was still fit for work. Gallazzi said that the law in Scotland means that there can be no criminal inquiry into her son's death. "The investigation took about two-and-a-half years," she said.

"They came back and basically sat me in a room, and told me that because my son didn't take a breath, he has no legal persona in Scotland. My son doesn't exist."

The mother has since launched a petition to give stillborn babies a legal identity. You can access it here.