A mother who was left horrified after her baby’s head was cut and scarred as she was born by caesarian section has asked NHS Highland for a full investigation.
Emma Edwards, from Wick, yesterday met senior health board figures to discuss the incident which left her daughter Karmen with a one-and-a-half inch scar between her eye and her ear.
The blunder happened at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.
After yesterday’s meeting, Ms Edwards said she had asked for a full investigation to be carried out.
The 21-year-old said: “They said they will see what they can do.
“I think the man we were speaking to was concerned as well but he said he couldn’t make any guarantees.”
She said she would consider taking her case to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, depending on the outcome of NHS Highland’s internal consideration of her case.
The procedure which left baby Karmen injured was carried out by a locum doctor who claimed that she had not been told that Ms Edwards was in labour as she performed the procedure.
The injured infant had to wait a day for a plastic surgeon to travel from Aberdeen to stitch her wound.
Ms Edwards was initially booked into Raigmore for a caesarian section on the morning of Thursday, June 16, because of the large size of her baby in scans.
Many mothers from Caithness need to make the near 100 mile journey from the far north to Inverness under present guidelines.
The threshold for sending mothers to Raigmore was lowered last year after a baby girl died of the e.coli sepsis infection just 40 hours after being born at Caithness General Hospital in Wick.
Ms Edwards travelled from Wick on the Wednesday with her partner George McPhee, 26.
However, the family returned to Wick on the Friday night because of the number of emergency operations being carried out before travelling back to Inverness on Sunday so she could have her baby on Monday morning.
But at 3am her waters broke, and she went to Raigmore three hours later.
Karmen was then immediately rushed to the special care baby unit after the cut was discovered.
Ms Edwards at the time described her experience as a “disaster from the end to the start”.
