London Hospital Launches Investigation After Woman Delivers Miscarried Baby At Home After Hospital Allegedly Turned Her Away

A London hospital has launched an investigation after a woman, who was four months into her pregnancy, stored the remains of her miscarried baby inside her home freezer.

According to The Guardian, a woman named Laura Brody, and her partner Lawrence White, were allegedly forced to store the remains of her miscarried baby in her home freezer after University hospital Lewisham allegedly sent them home and told them to wait seven days for a delivery bed when the couple learned their son had passed away in the womb.

The Guardian reports the woman previously went through an early miscarriage and was “explicitly” told by the hospital that there was no way she’d be able to deliver the child at home without medical supervision. However, four hours later, Brody ended up delivering the child at home in the toilet.

When the couple called the health and emergency hotline, they were told it wasn’t an emergency. The hotline then allegedly told them to wrap the miscarried baby in a wet cloth and place him in a plastic container. Afterward, the couple went to Acute and Emergency (A&E), where they were turned away to have their baby’s remains stored in a mortuary due to not having the right paperwork. They decided that in order to preserve the baby for postmortem, storing the baby in their home freezer would be best.

“No one would want their baby’s remains to end up in a Tupperware box. It was just shoved on to the side, and completely ignored by staff, and treated like it was trash,” said Brody in an interview with The Guardian, adding that storage in a “staff fridge” was suggested.

“We didn’t know what that meant; if that was a fridge where everyone stores things. Given it was an unlabelled box, there was such a high chance it would be misplaced, the shifts would change, and we just had no confidence that it would make its way to the mortuary,” said Brody. And we didn’t want the baby’s remains to get lost, which we thought there was a very very real risk of happening.”

Brody says no one else should have to go through what the couple called a “grotesque” experience. “There shouldn’t be a second family who has to take their baby’s remains home. I just thought this is such an extreme situation to have happened, and I just want a line to be drawn and no one else to have to go through this,” she said.