Me and my operation: How a nylon knot can save women from the misery of miscarriage | Mail Online

Success: Fiona Stonehouse with her daughter Summer Rose

Every year in the UK, around 20 per cent of pregnancies end in miscarriage and stillbirth— a tragic issue that was brought into the spotlight recently when Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda Holden lost her second unborn baby.

Fiona Stonehouse, 36, an unemployment consultant from Liverpool, had suffered two miscarriages.

She then underwent a procedure that saved her next child.

THE PATIENT

Rushing to get ready for work one morning, I kept feeling I needed the loo. I went to the bathroom and suddenly there was blood everywhere. I was 20 weeks pregnant and knew it was the baby.

I screamed for my partner, Paul, who took one look at me and called for an ambulance.

Once we arrived at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, the labour pains started, so they transferred me to a delivery suite and midwives gave me painkillers.

We just couldn’t believe it— the day before, a scan had showed the baby was well and healthy.

The baby, who we called Melody Grace, was born with a pulse, but within 20 minutes she passed away.

 

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I held her for a while, feeling absolutely devastated, and left hospital that afternoon with only photographs of my lovely baby.

I wondered if it was something I’d done. Fourteen years previously, my daughter Imogen was born healthy, though I went into labour eight weeks early. That time, the doctors managed to stop the labour with drugs until I was full term.

When I went back to hospital after the miscarriage, the consultant said I might have cervical weakness. This means the cervix— the neck of the womb— starts to open before the baby is due.

So, when I got pregnant again six months later, doctors placed a stitch in the cervix to prevent it dilating too early. This time they kept a close eye on me.

At 17 weeks, a scan showed the cervix was‘funnelling’— opening and closing so it formed an hourglass shape— which the doctors said could allow in bacteria, putting the baby at risk of infection. I was told to rest.

At 20 weeks, my waters broke at home. The stitch had failed to work. At hospital, the doctors had to take it out so I could give birth to baby Paul Joseph, who was born without a pulse.

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