A scandal-hit hospital trust has come under fire once again after announcing the recruitment of a specialist maternity doctor with “a desire to promote normal childbirth”.
Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said it was looking for an obstetrics and gynecology consultant in its high-risk baby unit to support “active” birth.
However, safe childbirth advocates have reacted with fury online, claiming that “normal” has become a code word for “natural” childbirth, a fixation that has led many midwives to disapprove of medical intervention and Caesarean sections, even when necessary.
This “obsession”, they add, has been linked to failures in several maternity units in recent years, where hundreds of babies died partly as a result, major research has found.
Experts said the ad’s wording “is incredible.” Others called it “scandal”, “disgusting” and “extremely alarming”.
Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said it was looking for an obstetrics and gynecology consultant in its fetal and high-risk unit to support “normal births”. The advert, which has since been withdrawn, said the doctor would also have at least a year’s experience working in the NHS.
In response, consultant pediatrician Dr Ravi Jayaram, who helped catch serial baby killer Lucy Letby at the Countess of Chester Hospital, said: Anyone applying for this position should be immediately excluded from consideration for the position. Dr Jayaram, whose evidence helped convict Letby, added: “It should say ‘desire to support and promote safe childbirth’, if it needed to be said.”
Emily Barley, co-founder of the Safe Maternity Alliance, also said: Can someone from Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust explain why they are ignoring the findings of the Ockenden & Kirkup reports on the dangers of promoting ‘normal birth’ ? Barley, whose daughter Beatrice died at Barnsley Hospital in 2022 after staff mistakenly checked the mother’s heart rate instead of the baby’s, added: “This is extremely alarming.”
The trust was embroiled in similar controversy last year after Winchester’s Royal Hampshire County Hospital faced an unfair dismissal claim by a former consultant obstetrician and gynecologist.
Martyn Pitman, who had worked at the hospital for 20 years, was fired last March after raising concerns about midwifery care and patient safety at the hospital.
In a post on X, Catherine Roy linked to the advert and added: ‘Where Martyn Pitman used to work. I think the normal birth takeover is now complete. What a scandal!
In response, consultant pediatrician Dr Ravi Jayaram, whose evidence helped capture serial baby killer Lucy Letby at the Countess of Chester Hospital, said: “Anyone applying for this position should be immediately excluded from consideration for the position”.
He added: “(It should) say ‘desire to support and promote a safe birth’, if that were necessary.”
Meanwhile, Mr Pitman himself said: “Isn’t it surprising to Ravi, after all the recent maternity scandals, all linked to the dangerous normalization agenda, that this advert could be worded that way? It’s just incredible.
James Titcombe, whose son Joshua died at Furness General Hospital in 2008 from sepsis, added: “Siri, show me why the same problems cause avoidable harm to maternity services again and again.”
It took Mr Titcombe years to discover the truth of what had happened to his son.
Their campaign led to the Morecambe Bay Inquiry, which found a “lethal mix” of failures led to the unnecessary deaths of a mother and 11 babies.
Emily Barley, co-founder of the Safe Maternity Alliance, also said: “Can someone from Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust explain why they are ignoring the conclusions of the Ockenden & Kirkup reports on the dangers of promoting ‘normal birth “?”
The trust was embroiled in scandal last year after Winchester’s Royal Hampshire County Hospital (pictured) faced an unfair dismissal claim by a former consultant obstetrician and gynecologist.
James Titcombe, whose son Joshua died at Furness General Hospital in 2008 from sepsis, added: “Siri, show me why the same problems cause avoidable harm to maternity services again and again.” It took Mr Titcombe years to discover the truth of what had happened to his son. His campaign led to the Morecambe Bay Inquiry, which found a “lethal mix” of failures led to the unnecessary deaths of a mother and 11 babies.
Barley, whose daughter Beatrice died at Barnsley Hospital in 2022 after staff mistakenly checked the mother’s heart rate instead of the baby’s, added: “This is extremely alarming.”
MailOnline has contacted Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Respected bodies have frequently promoted the idea of ”normal birth.”
But the Royal College of Midwives formally abandoned its “normal birth” campaign in 2017, after previously praising trusts for keeping caesarean section rates low.
In 2022, a landmark 250-page report by senior midwife Donna Ockenden found that Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust presided over catastrophic failures for 20 years and failed to learn from their own inadequate investigations.
It showed that mothers were forced to have natural births even though they should have been offered a caesarean section.
This caused babies to be stillborn, die shortly after birth, or be left with severe brain damage.
Around 200 babies and nine mothers could have survived if they had been given better care, while the trust’s low caesarean section rate was seen as a positive nationally and locally, he said.
In the wake of the Shrewsbury report, several women told how they felt pressured not to have a caesarean section.
One of them was MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who revealed in 2022 that she had been “told I was not going to have a caesarean section” during the difficult birth of her first child.
Recalling her experience, she told LBC that after her son was born she realized it was “ridiculous” not to have had the procedure and that it is “absolutely” what should have been done.
Trevelyan added that she was “very damaged” but fortunately her son was fine.
It comes as a damning report into the NHS maternity care “postcode lottery” last month also ruled that good care is “the exception rather than the rule”.
A long-awaited parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma, which heard testimonies from more than 1,300 women and discovered that pregnant women are being treated like a “piece of meat.”
At the time, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins called the testimonies heard in the report “heartbreaking” and promised to improve maternity care for “women during pregnancy, childbirth and the critical months that follow.”
NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard also said the experiences outlined in the report are “simply not good enough”.
Last week, youThe Green Party was also criticized for stating that childbirth should be treated as a “non-medical event”.
In its maternity policy, the environmental party described life-saving cesarean sections as “risky.”
Among their electoral promises, they stated that they would “work to reduce the number of interventions in childbirth” and highlighted the party’s concern about the drop in “natural” birth rates.
The proposals, which have now been removed from the party’s website but are still circulating on social media, were branded “archaic” and “disappointing” by doctors.