The Tragic Consequences of Following the Narrative

Sad death of baby Molly in 2020

This article follows on from my previous article ‘The Tragic Consequences of believing Anti-Science’. This detailed how Stephanie Warriner had mistakenly been labelled as Covid positive before being killed by asphyxiation for not wearing a mask.

As I said in that article, I don’t like writing about people’s deaths, to avoid unnecessary pain to the family involved. But when I do, I write about the ones where there is no speculation as to what happened. In doing so, my hope is that at least one person will be in a similar position in the future and think to themselves that what they are doing is wrong. Hopefully, by remembering articles such as this one, fewer people will follow the narrative and do what they believe is right.

This tragic story happened in Dublin in May 2020. The verdict from an inquest at the Dublin District Coroner’s Court was recorded this week.

Joanne Taylor Smith was pregnant with her first child and attended the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street. Ms Taylor Smith’s labour was six days overdue and slow and because she had a fever it was decided to induce her, so as to deliver the baby by C-section.

At this point, the hospital registrar, Dr Adriana Olaru, said the foetal heartbeat readings from the CTG were “satisfactory”.

However, Ms Taylor Smith didn’t get a C-section at that point in time. Pandemic rules said that her partner, Keith Taylor Smith, could only be allowed to support her in the theatre if Ms Taylor Smith tested negative for Covid.

The only person that rule could possibly ‘benefit’ would be Mr Taylor Smith because all the other parties (Ms Taylor Smith and the hospital staff) would have been going into theatre regardless. Presumably, the couple live together so I doubt very much whether Mr Taylor Smith was concerned whether his partner had Covid or not.

But the rules is the rules and so everybody had to wait for 50 minutes for the Covid test to come back negative.

At the same time as the results came back, the baby’s CTG readings were showing “pathological changes” which meant an emergency C-section had to be performed.

If you are wondering why the baby’s CTG readings changed at the exact moment the Covid test came back then you are obviously a natural sceptic. In fact, changes to the CTG had changed whilst they were waiting for the Covid test results but “it was not communicated to medical staff”.

Dr Olaru remarked that if she had known about the change they would “have to expedite the delivery and we will not wait for the Covid test”.

But more stupid pandemic rules got in the way. Dr Olaru explained “that she would normally have been around the labour ward where Ms Taylor Smith was, but due to Covid-19 restrictions, medical staff did not stay in the area if not examining patients”.

So the doctor had to leave the ward and so was not informed about the change in the baby’s heartbeat.

Sadly, baby Molly was “in poor condition” at the point of delivery. The baby girl was “not breathing at birth, while it was two and a half minutes before her heartbeat was restored”.

Whilst her condition rapidly improved, an “MRI scan taken when she was five days old confirmed that Molly had suffered extensive brain damage…A decision was taken to provide palliative care to the baby girl after she became “critically unwell”. Tragically, Molly died at only six days old.

The coroner noted that post-mortem results showed that Molly was normally formed and developed at birth. Consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, Stephen Carroll, said that “Molly’s mother had an uneventful pregnancy until she was induced in the hospital”.

The coroner’s verdict was death by medical misadventure. The hospital acknowledged that there had been “a failure to appreciate changes in Molly’s heart rate tracings” and an apology was read out.

Whilst we can blame the hospital staff for the outcome, I don’t. We don’t know how we would have acted in that situation. What I do blame is the system and the people who put the ridiculous pandemic rules in place. Pandemic rules which meant that doctors weren’t allowed to stay looking after their patients.

If there is a silver lining to this tragic story, it is that baby Molly’s heart valves were donated and transplanted into another newborn baby, hopefully saving another life.

RIP baby Molly.