'I was sitting in a maternity ward corridor having lost my baby. I was there alone. Nobody to offer any comfort'..

Study urges a new model of care for the support of multiple miscarriages

- BY LYNNE KELLEHER

IRISH women have spoken of the loneliness and trauma of experiencing multiple miscarriages in a University College Cork study.

One said: "I was sitting on a hard chair on a busy corridor of a maternity ward outside the kitchen door having been told that I lost my baby. I was there alone. Nobody to offer me a word of comfort"

This is the harrowing testimony of one of 13 females who experienced multiple miscarriages and took part in a new UCC study examining how services for patients with repeated miscarriage vary across the country's 19 maternity hospitals and units.

After waiting close to three hours in the corridor, the woman told a midwife she could no longer endure it. She told researchers: "I said it's actually inhumane to leave a woman like this." One man, among the seven male partners interviewed, echoed her distress: "[my wife] was brought up to where the rest of the women were having their babies. And she was put in a room beside them to lose hers. Which is, I think is completely wrong."