‘I thought I would be bringing home my baby girl, instead I was told that she was dying’

The last thing Katie Fowler remembers is travelling in a taxi to hospital to have her baby. Two days later, she was woken from a coma in intensive care and told her daughter Abigail had been born but would not survive. “I thought I would be bringing home my baby girl,” Katie said. “Instead I was woken up and told that she was dying. It was the worst moment of my life.”

Abigail died in her parents’ arms later that day, at just 48 hours old. It was a desperately tragic situation – and yet, as an inquest heard last week, it was also completely avoidable. Katie and her husband Rob Miller are the latest bereaved parents to join calls for a national public inquiry into maternity services in England.

There have already been a number of high-profile inquiries into individual trusts, including Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury and Telford, and East Kent.