A coroner has condemned a ‘gross failure’ in care after a mother and her newborn daughter died following a planned home birth in Prestwich, Greater Manchester. Jennifer Cahill, 34, and her baby Agnes Lily died in June last year after a delivery described by the coroner as ‘a Victorian-age nightmare’.
Ms Cahill, an international export manager, suffered a haemorrhage and lost five pints of blood due to a tear between her vagina and anus. She went into cardiac arrest in the ambulance and died from multiple organ failure the next day. Agnes was delivered not breathing with the umbilical cord around her neck and died four days later at North Manchester General Hospital.
Rochdale Coroner’s Court heard that Ms Cahill’s pregnancy was considered high-risk because she had suffered a postpartum haemorrhage after her first child in 2021. Despite being advised to give birth in hospital, the dangers of a home birth were not fully explained. An expert midwife, Abigail Holmes, said there were ‘no meaningful conversations’ about the risks and that the word ‘death’ was not mentioned.
The inquest revealed that the two community midwives, Julie Turner and Andrea Walmsley, had worked 12-hour shifts before attending the birth and were awake for more than 30 hours. They were unaware of a detailed birth plan prepared by the couple, and vital observations such as blood pressure and foetal heart rate were not properly recorded, with one reading scrawled on an incontinence pad that was later discarded.
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust has accepted that Ms Cahill should have been referred to a senior midwife after deciding on a home birth. The coroner continues to hear evidence.
