Princess Anne left
midwives in stitches today as she recalled fearing that one of her babies
had become “wedged” when she tripped over in a horse lorry while
heavily pregnant.
The Queen’s eldest daughter
was chatting to maternity experts on a visit to the new headquarters of the
Royal College for Obstetrics and Gynecology with the Duchess of Cambridge,
who is patron of the organization. The royal women were shown a demonstration
of a new Intrapartum Fetal Surveillance tool, which monitors the safety of babies
during labour in order to move to an emergency delivery if the baby’s head gets
stuck in the mother’s pelvis.
“Wedged?” asked
Anne, to laughter.
The Princess, who is a mother
to Peter Phillips, 44, and Zara Tindall, 40, then told the group how
she feared that would happen to her during one of her pregnancies, adding:
“I thought, that’s a bit interesting!… [the baby] ended up the right way
up though.”
Professor Tim Draycott, Vice
President of RCOG and Professor of Obstetrics, who was helping to demonstrate
the tool, said later: “She said she had tripped over a horse lorry while
heavily pregnant and thought that had happened.”
The tool has been developed
over the past five years by the Avoiding Brain Injury in Childbirth
collaboration, which hopes to pilot it later this year and roll it out nationwide
in 2023.
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Anne’s story had everyone laughing
The Duchess and the Princess
watched Dr. Katie Cornthwaite, obstetrics and gynecology registrar and Dr.
Rachna Bal give a demonstration of new training for health workers faced with
delivering, via cesarean section, an infant whose head is wedged in the pelvis
– an issue that is a growing litigation problem for the NHS.
Professor Draycott stood at
the head of the dummy mother to demonstrate the role of the anesthetist in
keeping the parents informed of what is happening during the procedure.
Anne made the medical staff
laugh when she quipped “You do this with just an epidural?”.
At one point the Duchess and
Princess leaned forward to peer into the cesarean opening as Dr. Cornthwaite
described in detail how she removed the dummy baby.
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Anne and Kate were making a rare outing together
Prof Draycott said later what
is known as “impacted foetal head” was becoming a “huge”
problem for the NHS which has been facing lawsuits following difficult births
where the baby has suffered trauma around the head.
He said: “I think this is
a really good example of the NHS working well. NHS resolution which do all the
litigation identified this as an emerging problem, and the Department of Health
worked with the professionals. to say ‘OK what are we going to do about this,
let’s design a new training programme. Let’s get this sorted out. Let’s stop
babies being injured.”
Dr. Cornthwaite said
afterward: “It was really lovely to see how engaged they both were. They
were genuinely interested. It was lovely to share something that we are
passionate about and see that they care about it.”
Lisa Hinton from the THIS
Institute, which is based in the same building, added: “They really picked
up on the importance of teamwork and the impact it has on the mother in
labour.”
