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MELBOURNE - A Melbourne woman has told of how she delivered her baby girl into a hospital toilet bowl while waiting for medical care.
Kay Webb, 24, of Mount Waverley, said she was rushed to the Monash Medical Centre shortly after 11am (AEDT) last Tuesday with contractions two
to four minutes apart.
When she arrived, she was sent to a standard share room rather than a birthing suite.
A midwife briefly examined her but no-one checked if her cervix had dilated, Mrs Webb said.
"I knew it (the birth) was imminent. I just waiting for someone to come back and see if I was dilated," Mrs Webb told Southern Cross Broadcasting today.
"No-one actually came back to see me."
Mrs Webb said she could not stand the pain of the contractions and, feeling strong bowel pressure, went to the toilet.
A short time later, the baby was born and fell into the toilet bowl.
Mrs Webb said she was screaming but was locked in the toilet.
Her husband, Michael, pressed the emergency buzzer for assistance before breaking into the cubicle.
"I'm not exactly happy with the performance (of the midwife), especially for abandoning me when I really needed her. She said she'd come back and she never did," Mrs Webb said.
No-one from the hospital had contacted the family since the drama but staff had made "wisecracks" about the birth, some describing her daughter as a "champion swimmer", she said.
The baby, Mrs Webb's second, will suffer no ill effects.
But hospital spokeswoman Margaret Burke said staff and birthing volunteers had apologised before Mrs Webb was released.
"There has been no acknowledgement that the staff were upset about the birth experience because they really pride themselves on delivering top-end care," Ms Burke told AAP.
"The staff organised a beautiful gift pack including a pamper pack for her (Mrs Webb) and things for the baby the volunteers had made and they wrote a card apologising for not delivering a birth experience that they themselves would have liked to deliver."
Staff members were "very comfortable" with the hospital's procedures in Mrs Webb's case, but were "devastated" about the outcome, Ms Burke said.
Most second-time mothers knew bowel pressure such as that Mrs Webb experienced was a sign of imminent birth, she said.
"The only way we could have stopped it would have been to tie Kay to the bed," she said.
Mrs Webb was comforted by staff after the birth, was given counselling and had been offered contact details for the hospital's complaints officer, but no complaint had been filed, she said.
- AAP