Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced that Donna Ockenden would lead an independent investigation into maternity care at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust, emphasizing the need for transparency and family involvement.
A family is enduring significant hardship as they desperately seek a diagnosis for their 14-month-old daughter, who is battling a mysterious, undiagnosed illness. Elyza, the daughter of Yasmin Whittington, 30, from Brechin, Angus, is afflicted by an unknown condition manifesting as persistent sickness, poor feeding, diminished muscle tone, and chronic fatigue.
Sofii Lewis described her experience, stating, "I knew I wasn't safe. But I didn't think I was out of control." This highlights the confusion many face with postpartum psychosis.
We are incredibly proud parents to two wonderful daughters. Juliette is a force in this world. With her beautifully positive energy, she spread fun, love and happiness to those around her and she continues to do so now.
We feel robbed. Nicola was handling her epilepsy, taking her medication which was reviewed periodically but she nor us knew anything about sudden unexpected death. Because of this they had become 'too complacent' about the illness and the family would have been more wary if they had been made aware of the risk of SUDEP.
The failure to prescribe the medication correctly was a failure in basic care and this was compounded by the failure to recognise the hypocalcaemia and the mis-prescribing across multiple shifts and clinical disciplines. There were thus multiple missed opportunities to recognise the prescribing error and overdose and its effects in a timely fashion that may have improved the outcome for Sidra and prevented her death.
"It sounds probably cuckoo, but I just I knew that she was going to be OK," Plemmons tells TODAY.com. "As I would leave these appointments, I was being told, 'We'll probably lose a heartbeat before you're back at the next appointment,'" she shares. "I just kept telling my husband, 'I don't accept that. That's not going to be our story.'" Prayer gave the young mom a sense of peace,
Peter Dervin had spent all day by his son's side in Broomfield Hospital before he decided to get dinner. He pleaded with staff at the Essex facility not to leave his eldest child, Greg, alone in his absence. "They almost laughed at me and said, 'This is what we do. We're nurses and we look after patients'," Dervin recalls. Greg had been given lorazepam, an anxiety drug flagged by clinicians as leaving him prone to becoming unsteady and agitated.
When she was 16, Bethan James told her YouTube channel that by 2026 she hoped to have a partner, an enjoyable job and maybe even children. Bethan would have been 27 now - but her dreams were taken when she died aged 21 from a combination of sepsis, pneumonia and Crohn's disease. Bethan's sepsis wasn't spotted early enough and life-saving care was delayed.
February 20 is National Caregivers Day, celebrating caregivers everywhere, whether they are friends, professional caregivers, or family members, for the hard physical and emotional work they do that often goes unseen. Caregivers also include surviving parents trying to navigate their grief after the death of their spouse, while also supporting children who are trying to navigate their grief from the death of their parent.
Families "enduring everlasting grief" after losing babies due to NHS failings are being sidelined by a rapid review into maternity services, a campaign group has claimed. One woman, whose daughter died in 2022, described how victims are forced to "compress" their experiences into eight minutes, with some re-traumatised by having to choose the most important reasons for their babies' deaths.
I am lying in bed listening to the radio at my boarding school as my roommate is getting dressed. As she walks out of the door she says, See you at breakfast don't be late. I'm about to get up when the early morning news comes on the radio, and I hear the announcer saying my parents' names. By the time my roommate arrives at breakfast, everyone has heard.
It is really, really hard. He said the family had 'cried and begged for help' in meetings at home. 'Does our family unit have to break down? Does it have to get to a point where we no longer sustain this and then they'll step in and give you support? Because right now that's where we're at. We don't have any alternatives. If grandparents were an option, we'd already be doing it.'
'They're dead.' In disbelief, my response was unfiltered. 'What?' Followed by the F word. A wave of emotion rushed through me. My chest tightened. My body went cold. I could not immediately find the words to offer condolences, not because I did not feel them deeply, but because inside, my many parts were experiencing a collective shock. When you live with dissociative identity disorder (DID), news like this does not land in one place. It ricochets across all parts within.
When we think of rituals, we tend to think of face masks and wellness trends. But there are actually ways to use rituals to help heal grief and deal with stressful times. On this episode, Lucy Lopez, Elizabeth Newcamp, and Zak Rosen are joined by ritual expert Betty Ray to talk about creative ways to help children process grief and big emotions, how to use ritual to create safety and expression, and much more.
