- Lisa Parkisson, 35, died two days after giving birth to her first child
- Sent her mother a text on Sunday night, but she was dead by morning
- Her son Zac is now in the care of her partner and her family
- A postmortem proved inconclusive and investigation launched
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The sight of a tearful grandmother trying to sing to her newborn grandson in a hospital ward would have been moving under any circumstances. Family and friends who watched Judith Smith cradle baby Zac, however, found it unbearable — and little wonder.
‘I couldn’t do it,’ admits the retired classroom assistant, 59. ‘I tried to sing but I couldn’t even get the words out because I was so choked.’
The song was Happy Birthday. For Thursday should have been the 36th birthday of Judith’s daughter — and Zac’s mother — Lisa Parkisson.
Just one day after this touching photograph was taken moments after Lisa Parkisson gave birth to her son Zac, the 35-year-old died suddenly on the post-natal ward at the Royal Oldham Hospital
Lisa had given birth to Zac, her first child, at the Royal Oldham Hospital just a few days before.
The birth, although it had not gone according to plan and ended in an emergency Caesarian, had been a joyous event.
Everyone
present said Lisa, who worked as a holiday cruise operator, could not
have been happier as she was wheeled back from theatre, tiny baby in her
arms.
‘She kept saying, “Isn’t he beautiful, Mum? Isn’t he just perfect?’ says Judith.
Judith
had been there at the hospital, along with Lisa’s sister and Chris
Harding, Zac’s father. In the days that followed other family members
visited the new mum in hospital to congratulate her. Everyone was
pitching in to help plan for the homecoming.
Heartbreaking: Lisa, who was just days from her 36th birthday when she died, with her newborn son Zac and partner Chris, in the last day before her unexplained and sudden death
Lisa’s father Robert, who had helped
her assemble the baby’s pram, had been dispatched to buy supplies. Chris
was putting the finishing touches to the nursery.
By
Thursday mum and baby should have been home from hospital, with Lisa
enjoying the first days of motherhood. Instead she was dead and her
stunned family were planning her funeral.
At
Lisa’s sister’s home in Derker, Oldham, the air of disbelief is
palpable, with preparations for Zac’s arrival from hospital going on at
the same time as discussions with the undertaker.
Sympathy cards are dropping through the front door along with ‘welcome baby’ cards.
‘People don’t know whether to say sorry or congratulations,’ says Lisa’s older sister Alison Ziemniak, 40, a mother of five.
Their questions are coming thick and fast; the bafflement about exactly what went wrong writ large.
The stark facts are these: At 2.30am on Saturday, Zac was born. By 9am on Monday, Lisa was dead.
‘How
can it happen, in this day and age?’ asks Alison. ‘We were told that
Lisa collapsed, but when we arrived we couldn’t see how — she was in bed
and we’re not sure if she was ever out of it. We believe a nurse went
in and saw that she wasn’t looking well, but had she been monitored
through the night? None of it makes sense.’
A post-mortem into Lisa’s death proved
inconclusive, further adding to her family’s anguish and confusion. An
investigation is now under way at the hospital in Greater Manchester.
Questions will doubtless be asked about how many times nurses checked on
Lisa through the night before her death and why any medical concerns
were not picked up sooner.
Her
family wonder if the fact that her baby was in the neonatal care unit,
and not by her side, meant she wasn’t assessed as often as she otherwise
would have been.
‘We just want to know,’ says Alison. ‘It all seemed to just go wrong out of the blue.’
Her
mother cries as she explains that on Lisa’s birthday she went to visit
her new grandson — clutching a photograph of the mother he will never
know.
‘It was the hardest
thing I’ve had to do. I gave him a cuddle and told him about his Mummy
and that it was her birthday. I tried to sing Happy Birthday but nothing
came out so I just sat and cried. It was all a blur. It still is.
‘Holding
him just reminded me of holding Lisa when she was born. I had her in
the same hospital. I can’t believe I’ll never see her again.’
Ms Parkisson, a cruise manager, went into labour on Friday night and had planned to have a water birth. But staff at the hospital discovered her unborn son was in the breach position, meaning he would have to be delivered by caesarean section
Ms Parkisson’s mother Judith Smith, along with Ms Parkisson’s sister Alison Ziemniak, right, and the rest of
the family are today demanding answers over the 35-year-old’s death
Lisa’s death was truly shocking.
She had been a week over her due date when Zac was born, and his breech
position meant that her planned water birth turned into a Caesarian
section.
It was a traumatic
time, and she complained of an excruciating headache after receiving an
epidural (‘as if her head was about to explode,’ according to her
sister). But Zac arrived safely and over the weekend all had seemed
perfectly normal.
‘We’d all
been to see her on the Saturday and she was on top of the world,’ says
Judith. ‘She talked about how awful the headache had been but they had
given her medication and it seemed to have passed.
‘There
were a few problems with Zac. He’d been twitching a little and they’d
taken him away to do some tests in the neonatal unit, but by Sunday Lisa
had been told he was fine and she wasn’t worrying any more. She was
just looking forward to getting him home. I’d never seen her so excited,
or so happy.
‘Now we are left wondering if the headache was a sign that something was terribly wrong.’
On
Sunday evening Lisa texted her mum and sister to say she was going to
sleep now. ‘I replied, “You need a good sleep, my loveâ€,’ recalls
Judith. ‘It just doesn’t seem possible she isn’t going to wake up
again.’
The first the family
knew of a problem was on Monday morning when staff phoned Lisa’s father
Robert — officially her next of kin, as Lisa and Chris weren’t married.
‘The
nurse said they’d been trying to get Chris too, but couldn’t. She said
Lisa had collapsed and it was an emergency. Could we get there?
‘I was there in minutes. When I arrived she was in bed and the crash team were still working on her.’
By the time other members of the family arrived, just after 9am, it was clear the situation was serious.
Heartbreaking: Baby Zac will never know his mother
‘It
was just a like a nightmare,’ says Alison. ‘We still don’t know what
happened, only that some time around 8am they’d found Lisa with just a
faint pulse and that something was terribly wrong.
‘They kept coming out and saying they
were still working on her, then they told us she was dead. No one could
take it in.
‘I was screaming and running up the corridor. My mum had
collapsed. Chris was angry. He kept shouting, “Why, why? How did this
happen?â€. My dad was just standing there like a lost soul.
‘When
they let us in to see Lisa, Mum went straight to her to hold her, and
as she pulled down the sheet there was blood absolutely everywhere.
‘Everyone was in bits, even the staff were crying. No one seemed to be
able to take it in.’
The
family’s grief is raw and their stories a little jumbled as they take
turns to speak.
Chris, a warehouse manager, is in pieces as he describes
Lisa taking her first tentative steps of motherhood.
‘She
was so nervous about it all. I’d had two children before, so I knew how
to change nappies and bath babies.
‘But Lisa kept asking, “Am I doing it
right? Is this OK?â€. She was brilliant, though. She held his little
head as she bathed him and she looked so happy.’
Chris
reveals that they hadn’t even agreed on a name before Lisa died. ‘We’d
still been discussing it. She wanted Zac, I wanted Lewis.
‘The
hardest thing for me was to have to make that call after she died. I
went with Zac, obviously. Then I had to go and register the birth. It
was all wrong. She should have been with me.’
He says he’s determined that Zac will grow up knowing all about his mother, though.
‘He’s
going to know that she was over the moon to have him. The day we had
the scan and they said it was a boy, her face was a picture.
‘She said he was making her life
complete. She’d never regretted not having children earlier. We’d talked
about it and she said she was glad she hadn’t — she’d seen the world
with her job but now she was ready to settle down. We were going to get
married. Everything was sorted. Now everything is gone.’
The
family all agree that Lisa, the youngest daughter of the family and the
‘beautiful, bubbly one’ according to her dad, was as happy as anyone
had seen her in the days before her death.
‘We
never expected Lisa to be a mum, but she was taking to it like a duck
to water,’ recalls Alison. ‘She’d always been a party girl. She was
always in a rush, always busy and laughing. I was the maternal one. She
never seemed to want kids. But when she met Chris two years ago, it all
changed.
‘When she told us
she was pregnant she was still a bit stunned about it, but she became
more and more excited. By the end she was chatting about how she’d start
coming on the school run with me to get some practice.
Chris Harding (pictured with Ms Parkisson), paid tribute to his partner and the mother of his son, ‘I loved Lisa so much and she loved me. I am numb about what¿s happened’
The Royal Oldham Hospital has launched an
internal investigation into the death of Ms Parkisson, pictured left and
right. A spokeswoman said staff were unable to resuscitate her, and the
cause of death is unknown
‘She said she was going to take a full year off work. She knew she was having a boy. She’d got everything arranged. And when he was placed in her arms, she said it was the best moment of her life.’
Robert says his daughter had been nervous about whether she had it in her to be a good mum.
‘We had a chat about it and she said “what if I can’t do it, Dad?â€, and I said “of course you’ll be able to do itâ€. Everyone feels they can’t, but they can. I knew she would. She was a little star — she threw herself into everything.
‘She came in one day and told me she was getting “bump photos†done, whatever they are. It was gobbledegook to me but it was lovely to see her so excited. It was as if she’d found her role in life.
‘I went out with her and bought the pram. She wanted a Silver Cross. She phoned me later in a panic, saying she wasn’t even sure how to push a pram — so we put the thing together and she practised pushing it up and down the living room. She was so determined to be a good mum — and she would have been. She wanted to give that little boy everything. Now we’ll have to.’
Chris collected his baby son from hospital over the weekend.
Cathy Trinick, head of midwifery at the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said they were unable to resuscitate Ms Parkisson.
She added: ‘This is a really tragic event and our thoughts and condolences go out to the family.’
She said the cause of death was not known and that staff were carrying out their own internal clinical investigation.
Meanwhile life has to go on, for Zac’s sake if nothing else.
‘We have no idea where we go from here,’ says Judith. ‘But we’ll all rally round to help Chris.
‘Zac will never remember his mummy. But we’ll make sure he grows up knowing all about her and what an amazing person she was.’
She says that Zac looks ‘the spitting image’ of his mother when she was a baby.
‘Holding him was like holding her. He is her, to me. One of the things she said when he arrived was that he was an early birthday present for her — the best ever. I suppose he is all of her we have left, so to us he is a gift, too.’
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Happyperson,
somewhere, United Kingdom,
8 hours ago
Truly heartbreaking!
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