"The couple said their six-month wait to find out Louie's cause of death had "felt like a lifetime" and had made it difficult for them to "move forward"."
"Ms Tongue, a 34-year-old teacher, said it was "cruel" for families already at "their lowest point in grief" to be left waiting for answers."
"Mr Bevan said losing a child is "the worst thing any parent can go through" but the wait had made it "10 times harder"."
Grieving families are experiencing extensive delays—sometimes up to a year—for post-mortem results on babies due to a critical shortage of paediatric pathologists. The West Midlands currently has no paediatric pathologists employed and only two perinatal pathologists at Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust cover the whole region. A couple from Tipton waited six months to learn why their baby Louie died hours after being born at 29 weeks following an emergency C-section for reverse blood flow. Initial neonatal response deteriorated, CPR was attempted for 40 minutes and then stopped, and parents were unable to hold the baby. The shortage is described as a crisis and is deepening parental distress and obstructing bereavement processes.
Read at www.bbc.com
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