Home birth Errors led to deaths of mother and baby

When Jennifer Cahill went into labour with her second child last year, she thought that the home delivery, assisted by two midwives and with her husband by her side, would be a relatively simple one.

- Hannah Al-Othman Raphael Boyd

Within 24 hours, however, she was dead and her newborn daughter was fighting for her life after experiencing “horrors that should be consigned to a Victorian-age nightmare”.

Cahill, 34, died after her baby, Agnes Lily, was born in the early hours of 3 June last year at her home in Prestwich, north Manchester. The international export manager suffered a haemorrhage and lost five pints of blood - almost half the blood in her body - owing to a tear between her vagina and anus. She was taken to hospital, but 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 wrapped around her neck, and also died at North Manchester general hospital, four days later.

Yesterday, Rochdale coroner's court heard that both mother and daughter had died because of “a catastrophic error and a gross failure to provide basic medical care”, which started when Cahill first began to consider a home birth.

An estimated one in 50 births in England and Wales taken place at home - equivalent to about 2% of deliveries. However, they are only recommended for low-risk pregnancies.

Cahill's pregnancy was considered high risk because she had suffered a postpartum haemorrhage after giving birth to her first child in 2021. She had been advised to have her second baby in hospital because of this, the inquest heard, but her husband, Rob, told the court that the risks of a home birth had not been fully explained.