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Two years ago, Erin Cooper, an intensive care nurse from Bedfordshire, experienced a frightening complication while 26 weeks pregnant. Preparing for a holiday, she suddenly began bleeding and feared for her unborn baby’s life. During the ambulance ride to the hospital, she gripped the hand of a paramedic, pleading, “Please don’t let me die, I’ve got two older children that I need to be home for.” Despite efforts by doctors to stop the bleeding, further episodes occurred until Erin went into labor prematurely at 34 weeks.
Her son, Milo, was delivered through an emergency C-section under general anesthesia following a significant bleed that ruptured her waters. Erin suffered a catastrophic hemorrhage, requiring 13 blood transfusions. It was only after the birth that doctors diagnosed her with Placenta Accreta Spectrum (PAS), a condition where the placenta grows too deeply into the womb’s wall. Upon waking, Erin found a note in her hand stating that she had undergone a hysterectomy, an indication of the severity of her condition. She recalls, “I couldn’t talk. And I wrote the word ‘hysterectomy’. And they said, ‘Yes, we had to do hysterectomy’. I knew at that point, things had gone really wrong.”
Erin’s story is one among many raising concerns about the lack of awareness and appropriate care for PAS. More than 100 mothers have come together to highlight what they describe as “a dangerous gap in maternity care,” pointing out insufficient specialist training and the absence of a national database to track cases. Some women have suffered life-altering complications, including permanent damage to their bladder and bowels. One woman shared that her daughter experienced a neonatal stroke caused by PAS, resulting in cerebral palsy. Charlotte Dron, a 42-year-old teacher from Southend,
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