Still mourning bitterly this afternoon, Christina Garcia, 20, a first-time mother of Billy White, Cayo, told Amandala that she had a horrible experience at the San Ignacio Town Hospital on Sunday, November 8, when she arrived at the hospital to deliver her firstborn, Marisol Elizabeth Perez. After 12 hours in labor, the child was delivered via C-section – blue all over – but within an hour, she was dead.
“No se que paso!” the mother who had joyously carried her baby to term, told us, meaning “I don’t know what happened.”
Robert Garcia, Christina’s brother, told our newspaper that he took Christina home from the hospital at 1:30 in the afternoon, and her dead newborn, Marisol, was laid to rest in their home village at 4:00 this evening.
It’s one in the series of sad fatalities that the family is begging public health authorities to not repeat, because … “we are all human beings,” he said.
Robert Garcia and his sister, Rosie, claim that Christina was treated inhumanely when a nurse at the hospital told the mother, while she was in labor, to stop screaming or she would be put out of the building.
According to Robert, he drove 8 miles from Billy White to San Ignacio, Cayo, to take Christina, his youngest sister, to the hospital at 2:00 on Sunday morning. She was not checked until 5:00 a.m. and then again at 7:30 a.m.
The nurse told Christina to relax; it is not her time, said Garcia.
Rosie, who visited the hospital to see her sister at about 9:00 on Sunday morning, said she heard the harsh words herself. She said the nurse told her sister to stop screaming or she would put her outside the hospital.
Relatives tell us that because of the delayed labor, the suggestion was made that the mother should get an ultrasound, but the nearest facility that offered the service would be La Loma Luz, a few miles away from the hospital.
Marisol—as the child that Christina had conceived with Jose Humberto Perez was to be called—was born weighing 8.5 pounds, and the reports indicate that the mother, 140 pounds, had trouble delivering the baby herself, and hence the cesarean section, reportedly performed by a Dr. Pacheco.
That was at 2:00 p.m. The baby was reportedly born blue, but it screamed, giving relatives hope. However, Christina told her siblings that the nurses took aside the baby, and an hour later, the newborn girl was pronounced dead.
We understand that there was no autopsy undertaken, because the family decided to bury the baby today and an autopsy would have meant a further delay.
Richard said that the doctor had advised that Marisol had died because she had swallowed the water from inside her mother’s abdomen (the amniotic fluid) before birth. The hospital staff tried to suction it out, but to no avail.
Distraught by their loss, the family said that they have filed a complaint with the hospital’s administration. We called them after we spoke with the family for their side of the story; however, we were advised that Dr. Misael Ramirez, the person in charge, was in a long meeting.
Amandala was also unable to reach Director of Health Services, Dr. Michael Pitts, who we were told is out of office, and Dr. Jorge Polanco, the person next in line, did not pick up his phone when we called.
The Garcia family of Billy White stresses that they do not intend to sue; however, they appeal to authorities to ensure that no other woman (or person) goes through such an ordeal.
Richard Garcia said that there have been lots of complaints from people who say that they are dissatisfied with the service.
Describing what the Garcia’s are feeling now as dissatisfied, though, would be an understatement.
Richard told us that his sister had complained, after she was discharged this afternoon, that a nurse had told her: “What you want to do; you want to put me in jail? You want them to fire me? You will say it is our fault!” – statements to which Garcia said his sister did not respond.
“This is a sad thing,” Robert said, “I don’t want it to happen again.”
The words resonated like the public mantras of Cenaida and Andy Jones, of Moho River, who lost their new son, Baby Andy, back in June, under what they described as similar circumstances. Baby Andy Jones was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. His mother gave birth to him alone on a hospital bed inside the Punta Gorda Hospital. After a sequence of ordeals, the baby died days later at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital (KHMH) in Belize City.
Last Thursday, November 5, another couple—Rudy Faber, and his wife Judith—complained that their son, Alexander Russell, had died under questionable circumstances at the KHMH. Authorities there are reportedly investigating.
(Note: The Spanish translation of Marisol is “sea and sun.” Another cited meaning is from Hebrew: “uncertain, maybe bitter”.)