Baby Loss Awareness Week

Debate between Alicia Kearns and Luke Charters

Monday 12th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Members who secured this debate, and all the families who have, in their darkest moments, raised their voices so that we can support them and, it is to be hoped, prevent future tragedies. I welcome the Health Secretary’s promise to publish a national action plan, and I want to focus on a few issues that I hope will be reflected in it. The first follows on from the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt). We must stop pushing women towards a normal birth. When my friends tell me that they are pregnant, I say to them, “You need to have the confidence to challenge the NHS.” We are taught to say, “Thank you; of course, whatever you say.” This is the one time in life when we should say, “Why? Stop. What are the other options? I want a different opinion. I need some time.” We must teach women to listen to their body, and to trust what it says.

We cannot say there is no obsession with normal births. When I was pregnant with my second, the hospital forced me to go on a one-hour online course, to convince me to have a vaginal birth, though I had an emergency C-section previously. At the end of the course, the hospital asked all of us on it, “Which of you are now ready to accept that you should go for vaginal birth?”. All the women said that they were, apart from me. The hospital said, “Why won’t you say yes?”. I said, “Well, on slide 20-something, you said that it was x% safer for me and my baby to have a second C-section, so that’s what I want.” They said, “It does say that, but let’s go for a natural birth. You can do it!” This is an obsession, and we have to challenge it.

[Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady’s comments remind me of our family’s experience. We had a traumatic first birth, and the second birth was an elective C-section. That was the only game in town; that is for sure. We said to the registrar—I will never forget it—“Do you tell women about the clinical risks of a vaginal birth—the same clinical risks that you have talked to us about for half an hour? Do you give women and families that data, so that they can make an informed choice?”. The registrar said, “No one’s asked me that in my entire career.” That is the precise point that the hon. Lady is making, and I thank her for making it.

[Alicia Kearns]

I am afraid that I will be drawing on a lot of personal experiences, but I scrapped at least nine further examples. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman.

The next thing I want to impress on the Health Secretary is that it should be mandatary to teach cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, for babies before they are discharged, particularly if they have been in a neonatal intensive care unit. During most pregnancies, we study what to do if our baby needs CPR, but we all know, even if we have had a baby before, the difference between the pregnancy course and how things are once we have held that baby in our arms. It is so different.

I praise Addenbrooke’s hospital, because it forced my husband to do a CPR course before I was discharged, as my daughter had to go into NICU for a brief period. When we came home, only about two weeks after she had been born, and when she finally reached her due date, she suddenly stopped breathing. It happened out of nowhere. We were sitting in bed. I remember screaming for my husband, and I think of the poor person on the phone when we dialled 999. I am normally quite good in an emergency, but not then. I lost the plot. I was screaming down the phone, “My baby’s dying! My baby’s dying! You have to save her.” Because my husband had done that CPR course, he was able to save this tiny baby’s life; it took them too long to get an ambulance to us. Her temperature had fallen below 34°C by the time the ambulance arrived. He saved her life at a time when I could not. I was not in a place where I could save my baby. Yet we let people go home from hospital without being retaught CPR, once they know what it is to hold a baby. I genuinely believe that it would save so many lives if we did what Addenbrooke’s did and forced people to spend 20 minutes doing a CPR course before they went home.

The next issue I will touch on is maternal death, because as my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash said, the numbers are rising. The leading direct cause of maternal death in this country is blood clots, but no friend who is pregnant or has gone through a pregnancy will say that that is the No. 1 cause. Instead, they will talk about diabetes, bleeding out during birth and all sorts of other things. I have gone back and looked through all three of my NHS trust books—I kept mine, although people are not meant to keep them after birth, because the NHS does not like them having all that evidence that they could use if there were ever an issue—and there is nothing about blood clots. NHS staff do not provide education about blood clots to women when they are pregnant, yet they are the No. 1 cause of maternal death.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is responsible for guidance, which is meant to be republished every few years, on how to prevent, diagnose and treat blood clots, but it has not updated that guidance since 2015. That means midwives and obstetricians have had no updated guidelines on how to handle the most common cause of death in women in pregnancy and after birth. Reviews were missed in 2018, 2021 and 2024. I have started to fight with the college to get it to do something about this, but even now, it says that it will not get updated guidance out until at least 2027. How many more women will die before then? I have met representatives from Thrombosis UK, and there would be no negative outcome from giving all women anticoagulants throughout their pregnancy; it poses no risk to them.

Unfortunately, last year, I was one of the people affected by this. I have had a real few years of it. I went to the doctor and said, “There is something wrong me with me. My only symptom is a slight catch in my chest.” I was not grabbing my chest and screaming, like everyone else does. I was dismissed, sent home, and told that there was nothing wrong with me. A lady wrote to me and said that she went to the doctor three times, worried about blood clots. She knew there was something not right in her leg, but each time, she was told she just needed to do some yoga and get moving. On the fourth time, the blood clots were finally diagnosed. In my case, I went back to the doctor and said, “There is something really wrong.” Luckily, the doctor did a D-dimer test, and then rang me to say that I needed to go to Addenbrooke’s immediately. The doctors found five clots that had passed through my heart and into my lungs. I was lucky to be alive. Addenbrooke’s said that I clearly had an exceptional doctor. I am so grateful to Dr Laura Stephens for saving my life.

The average woman has no idea that blood clots are the No. 1 maternal killer. Some 25% of those deaths happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, during which women probably do not go to the doctor, because they have done a pregnancy test and know that they are pregnant. The Department of Health and Social Care needs to do a mass awareness campaign. GPs need to be aware of the risks, and obstetricians and midwives need to be taught about not just “normal” birth, but all births. Tomorrow is World Thrombosis Day. I am calling for maternal blood clot prevention to be a priority in the new national strategy, because we can prevent them; almost all deaths of women from blood clots could have been prevented.

It may seem odd, but I briefly want to talk about a real cruelty that has been inflicted on mothers. The former Prime Minister apologised for the horrendous forced adoption scandal that took place in this country, but some babies never left those mother-and-baby homes. ITV found that 200 infants from eight homes were buried in mass plots in 10 cemeteries across the UK. As part of this work, will the Health Secretary ensure that the Government force local authorities, churches and charities to open up their records? The mums who were forced into those cruel mother-and-baby centres, and then lost their baby or had a stillbirth, do not know to this day where their baby is buried, and the graves are unmarked.