WINNIPEG – Sonya Shorting knew something was wrong on Monday morning.
Five months pregnant with her fourth child, Shorting started experiencing back pain and was spotting. She called the Women’s Hospital and was told to come in and see her doctor.
Instead she saw his assistant.
“She couldn’t find the baby’s heart beat at all … She goes, ‘I’ll be right back. I’m going to get the doctor and he’ll find it, ’cause he’s better at this than me.’ ”
But the assistant came back alone, did a Pap smear and said Shorting’s issue was a bacterial infection.
Shorting was told to make an appointment within five weeks and left the hospital with her boyfriend, Randy Pimental.
“I knew something was wrong. She was so white, she was going pale,” he said.
The two went to their parenting class. The discomfort continued, and Shorting went to the bathroom.
“All of a sudden … I can see the baby’s head and I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
She miscarried less than five hours after leaving the hospital.
“I shouldn’t have left the hospital, but they told me to,” she said.
“If there was no heartbeat, the baby’s dead, that’s life,” said Pimental. “Listen though, whatever happened should’ve happened in a hospital bed, not in a washroom.”
The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said it reached out to Shorting but wouldn’t do an interview with Global News.
“A member of our patient relations office has reached to the patient to speak with her directly about her concerns,” a WRHA spokeswoman said in an email.
The health authority urged patients with concerns to contact their patient relations office.
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