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Dying at birth: when the dream of "respected childbirth" becomes a nightmare

2020-05-23T21:30:03.856Z


Justice investigates in La Plata a team of professionals who attend pregnant women with a proposal for "humanized childbirth". Two stories of pain, in the first person.


Laura Agostinelli

05/23/2020 - 18:17

  • Clarín.com
  • Society

Teresa looks better now. Little by little, she feels that she recovers part of what she was before that April 2017. Blonde, tall, returned to her usual weight five months ago, after a year of strict diet and personalized training. He had gained 15 kilos from menopause. At 41 years old, Teresa Falcone should have her uterus, her ovaries and her daughter Chavela, but in her delivery she lost everything . One year after that day, in a single operation, they removed five abdominal hernias of the seven he had, relocated his navel, and placed two special polyester meshes to close the 11-centimeter gap that was left in his abdomen after 44 hours of labor. After that April 20, 2017, Teresa suffered post-traumatic stress, became depressed, quit her job, divorced andshe was so sorry for trusting the obstetrician that she had promised her a respected birth .

In early 2016, Teresa coordinated the general management of the Cadastre of ARBA and raised her three-year-old daughter with her husband, Matías Guidobaldi. She is an architect, he is a kinesiologist and at that time they wanted to have three children. Teresa was afraid of obstetric violence after a friend lost her uterus to the malpractice of an interventional gynecologist. For this reason, when she became pregnant, she looked for professionals who would give birth in La Plata. They told her about an obstetrician who encouraged women to decide about her body and her pregnancy . He was interested and went to see him at the house where he was attending, at the corner of 12 and 38. When Fernando Daverio received her, Teresa found an obstetrician who was barely past 40, she was not wearing a dust jacket, she was smiling and listening intently.

"I felt like I was talking to a friend," he recalls. Some time later, she learned that this office  was not authorized by the College of Physicians of the Province of Buenos Aires, but that afternoon, the only thing Teresa knew was that she had found the obstetrician she wanted.

Teresa Falcone and Matías Guidobaldi. They lost their daughter Chavela in childbirth. Photo: Mauricio Nievas

Fernando Daverio was born in Bahía Blanca and since he was a child, remember, he already questioned everything. In 1994 he began his studies at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of La Plata and denied his training. He completed his residency in Gynecology and Obstetrics at the Gutiérrez Hospital and graduated in 2003. He assures that during that experience he saw the doctors intervene without reason : they made contact, broke bags, accelerated deliveries. For him things were different: pregnant women were healthy and they had to stop treating them as sick. Upon finishing his residency, Daverio traveled to Jujuy to study births in the original communities: women who gave birth with a midwife and not much else. He felt he found what he was looking for. Since then she has been dedicated to home births. It started with the oldest of her three children. His wife, Bárbara Pestaña Guido, shares his philosophy: she is a midwife, a teammate and is also being investigated. By 2013, Daverio claimed to have attended more than 50 home births.

In 2014, she created Gestando entre Peers , a care proposal with workshops involving some 10 pregnant women with a due date for the same month. The context could not be better: the fight for equal rights and the dispute for autonomy over the bodies began to mobilize a vast collective of women. His last name began to resonate. They invited him to conferences and debates. He had become the obstetrician of the moment.

April group

There are women who can choose how their delivery will be. There are women who do not. The latest report from the Obstetric Violence Observatory of the organization Las Casildas indicated that 7 out of 10 pregnant women had their bag artificially ruptured, 6 out of 10 underwent a cut in the vagina known as an episiotomy and 4 out of 10 they were prohibited from being accompanied during childbirth.

There are women who chose Daverio and gave birth without problems. "I had the most beautiful birth in the world with Fernando and his team", "I love him, I could have a fan club", are some of his comments on social networks. There are women who chose Daverio and had complications that ended with irreparable damage and complaints to the Justice .

Teresa had suffered high blood pressure during her first pregnancy. Two years later, she lost the second one at five months of gestation. Those records and her 38 years made her third pregnancy high-risk, but she said her obstetrician never warned her . On Tuesday, April 18, Teresa began with isolated contractions and alerted the team. They recommended immersion baths and normal life. They were going to tell him when it was time to go to the sanitarium. At 5 am on Wednesday he broke the bag. A midwife visited her at night, made a touch of her, told her to wait and left. At noon on Thursday Teresa had been without sleep for two days and felt that the contractions had disappeared but the pain had not. He got scared. She called Daverio, who only called her for 18, but at 16 Teresa could no longer: "I asked to call the ambulance because I felt that I was dying, I wanted to go to the sanatorium." Her husband notified the team, but instead of authorizing the transfer, they told her to stay at her house: at 5:00 PM, Daverio, a midwife and another obstetrician appeared. They wanted to do a home birth. Teresa and her husband insisted on going to the sanatorium to feel more secure. 

Teresa had been broken for more than 36 hours when they finally took her, in her own car, to the Ensenada Community Clinic. There he was reunited with his obstetrician.

"Daverio told me that it was a pity, that if he pushed a little more he would have the vaginal delivery that he had dreamed of so long," he recalls. They performed a cesarean section and the outcome was tragic . Teresa had suffered a placental abruption. Her baby ran out of oxygen. Internal bleeding infiltrated her uterus. A few hours after birth, Chavela passed away . Teresa, urgently, had her uterus and ovaries removed, still healthy. Two years and five months later, the expertise showed that Teresa had suffered a premature rupture of the pouch and that, in view of this condition, the obstetrician must arrange hospitalization, constant follow-up and if the baby is not born after 12 hours, perform a cesarean section.

On April 17 of this year, prosecutor Fernando Padovan, at the head of Prosecutor's Office 12, requested the prosecution of Daverio and his team for wrongful death and wrongful injury , after considering that there was "negligent surveillance of labor" and a " serious diagnostic error ”in the removal of Teresa's ovaries. "The behavior of the defendants generated an unauthorized risk, contrary to the duty that is required of them," says Padovan, noting that Daverio and his team "had a position of dominance of the situation and could have avoided the result." In addition, the prosecutor clarifies: "Although during the 'respected delivery' the woman has the right to avoid invasive practices, that does not displace the obligation of doctors to guarantee the health of the mother and of the unborn person."

When Fernando Daverio was asked about the accusations, he preferred not to respond.

The crimes imputed to him include penalties of one to five years in prison and disqualification of up to 10 years to practice medicine. On June 18, you must appear to testify.

May's group

On Monday, April 24, 2017, the entire team of Gestando entre Peers, with the exception of their leader, gathered the group that had a date for May. The midwives explained to the twelve pregnant women that Daverio had suffered “a fatal episode” with an April mother and that she was in shock, so she was not going to attend her deliveries nor could she refer them to another doctor. "Nobody works like us" was the whole explanation. After searching for three days, the twelve women found an obstetrician and midwife ready to finish the job. Within a week, a pregnant woman lost her baby to sudden death. Another was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Despite the fact that the control to detect this disease is done at week 24, no one had mentioned it to her.

“There were studies that determined risks and they did not report them to you. They always kept telling you, ' Healthy mom, healthy baby, zero risk .' On the one hand they spoke of empowerment and on the other they intervened on my decision of whether I want to study myself or not, ”reflects Eva Basterra, 40, a singer, administrative employee and mother of the May group. Two weeks after the "abandonment", the women learned that the team had returned to work. At the end of the year they wrote a manifesto where they told how Gestando entre Pares had taken away the childbirth they longed for. They publish it on their networks every April 24. They called it "No one works like us."

Julio's group

María José Suarez and Fernando Cipollone looked for their first son when they finished studying and building their house in Berisso. María José is 37 years old and is a plastic artist. Fernando, 40, is a luthier and has an instrument store. In November 2016 she became pregnant. She had first-time fears and remembered that her best friend had had them too and managed to overcome them with Daverio. From the beginning, María José's experience was different from that of her friend. The afternoon he heard the women who had already given birth, he got scared. One of them told, amused and proud, that Daverio had arrived late to her house and that she gave birth alone.

María José Suarez and Fernando Cipollone. Her daughter Nina was born with serious health problems. Photo: Mauricio Nievas

"Please don't leave me alone!" Begged María José. In addition, for her, the nearby neonatology room was a priority, so she opted for institutional delivery. A month before entering the date, María José found out that she had to pay $ 22,000 in fees, despite having social work. Today, a childbirth with Gestando even is $ 60,000 at home and $ 75,000 in an institution , six times more than what social works pay to their obstetricians. 

The price of childbirth was not the only sudden change for María José: the place where she was going to have her daughter, Nina, was not the clinic where her friend had given birth but another "a little more rustic", as a midwife described to her. When María José saw the Community Clinic room, she understood what he was referring to: a space three meters by two with a rickety bed, a black leather chair, white walls, and worn vermilion. To reserve it, in 2017, it was supplying $ 7,000 of the $ 22,000 that the delivery cost.

The Community Clinic is the only sanatorium in the region that has an agreement with Fernando Daverio. Its president is Juan Manuel de Rosa, who long ago was the leader of Quebracho and a personal doctor for Hebe de Bonafini . In 2009, De Rosa was imprisoned for qualified robbery and illicit association for the assault on the Oncology Center of Excellence in La Plata, from which 16 dialysis teams were taken, and for the theft of two defibrillators from the Gonnet Hospital, found in his clinic.

"Healthy mom, healthy baby, zero risk"

María José has been participating in a Facebook group for two years for pregnant women seeking obstetricians in La Plata. He wants to alert those who consult the Daverio team. The group rule is that each woman speak from her own experience and without judging others; Then she tells what happened to her: she arrived at Gestando entre Peers looking to remove her fears and in her delivery she saw how all were fulfilled . Nina had normal development until an ultrasound on June 9 showed less than average growth. The ultrasound scanner recommended a new control and a Doppler ultrasound -to detect oxygenation problems- within fifteen days. María José sent the images to the WhatsApp group and a midwife replied: “ Hello Majo bella, great! They are very good . " When he brought the studies to the office, he heard the same thing. She remained calm until July 9 entered the date and Nina was not born. He made an appointment with Daverio. He checked her over, told her everything was fine, and prescribed a Doppler echo for July 18.

On the afternoon of Friday the 14th, María José felt the first contractions and notified the WhatsApp group. Six hours later, the midwife told her to wait at home. Towards Saturday night the contractions increased. At one in the morning on Sunday, María José called the midwife: " By your voice, I realize that you are still missing, " she recalls diagnosing him. By 4 o'clock she felt more and more frequent and painful contractions and did not want to wait any longer. She arrived with her husband at the clinic at the same time as the midwife. In the room, María José felt that Nina was going to be born and tried to hold her back. He went to the bathroom and Nina was born . At that moment the midwife, the obstetrician and the pediatrician entered, who put the baby on her mother's chest without noticing that she was not breathing. He tried to resuscitate her on the floor for a few minutes and then took her to the Neonatology room, where - according to the complaint - nobody knew of the imminent birth. In the neo they performed advanced resuscitation maneuvers, with drugs, until his heart rate returned and he convulsed. Nina was 27 minutes without oxygen .

Two years later, in the investigation carried out by UFI 12 for the crime of malpractice, the neonatologist who revived the baby stated that Daverio never informed the neo about her deliveries: “They only warned when there were complications and already with the babies on guard ”. He also stated that Nina was not the last: “There was another case of a baby who was born in a home and brought by the pediatrician and Daverio in a car. The baby was very serious. " After that, the neonatologist resigned.

Two area coordinators also resigned after being "highly sensitized" by the events of Chavela and Nina, according to one of them in the case.

When the president of the clinic was consulted about the alleged lack of communication between the Daverio team and the neo, De Rosa replied: "I am not aware of the details of the complaint because I was never notified, there is no cause against the Clinic of the Community ". Regarding the obstetrician's relationship with the institution he runs, De Rosa stated that "Daverio, like 50 other colleagues, is external to the clinic, simply internal to his patients and cares for them."

Nina was a healthy baby from a healthy mom but after suffocation during childbirth she has cerebral palsy, microcephaly, refractory epilepsy, sees little, listens little, does not control her neck and does not swallow . Daverio never explained to María José and her husband why Nina lacked oxygen during childbirth. The family's lawyer, Alfredo Gascón, denounces that the team ignored the ultrasound alert that showed the development delay: “They had to have a more frequent and exhaustive follow-up. María José was taken to the extreme of a natural childbirth, absolutely contraindicated for these cases ”.

In addition, the lawyer adds that, according to witnesses, there is at least one other case: "A baby was rushed to the Ensenada Clinic after a home birth and then transferred to a more complex center." The case is in the investigation stage and, according to prosecutor Fernando Padovan, the investigation "is progressing strongly."

In the Facebook group for pregnant women seeking obstetricians in La Plata in which María José participates and in other social networks, at least fifteen other mothers report experiences of pain and fear with Gestando entre Peers. While waiting for Justice to be done, María José continues to alert all the women who consult for Daverio: “She will tell you that the birth is yours, that you can, do not be afraid and when you need it most, she will leave you alone "

Special for Clarín

Source: clarin

All life articles on 2020-05-23

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