CONSERVATIVE MP Claire Coutinho has revealed how she and her infant son suffered serious health issues following the birth of her baby at the start of the year.
In an interview with the Times on Tuesday (4), Coutinho, 40, said her newborn did not breathe for the first 15 minutes after the delivery on January 17, and that she herself was placed in an induced coma when her organs were failing.
The shadow energy secretary and MP for East Surrey told the paper she saw “the best and the worst of the NHS” and that she struggled to be “heard” when she was admitted to St Thomas’s Hospital in central London.
Her son, Rafael, now nine months old, spent two weeks in the neonatal unit and doctors feared he had brain damage.
But he recovered, and Coutinho described her son as being “phenomenal”, adding “he can’t quite crawl, but he can drag himself across the floor” and “he can clap” – even when he’s crying.
Recalling her experience, Coutinho said she had a “relatively good pregnancy until the final month” and added she became seriously unwell a day or so after the delivery.
She experienced vomiting, swelling, blurred vision and confusion.
“I started throwing up. I was swelling up, my vision was blurred and I was getting increasingly confused,” she said. “I could sense that my thinking wasn’t clear and that something was happening to my brain.”
She was diagnosed with acute fatty liver of pregnancy, a rare and life-threatening condition, and was moved to the high dependency unit as her organs began to fail.
Coutinho was quoted as saying she made preparations for the possibility she might die.
“I looked into getting an emergency marriage to make sure that my husband had any parental rights he might need to have,” she said. “We looked into writing a will.”
Doctors described her condition as multiple organ failure. She required emergency surgery for a haemorrhage and was put into a medically induced coma.
When she woke in intensive care, she could not hold her baby because of the wires attached to her arms.
After several days, her condition improved and she was transferred back to the maternity ward, where she spent her first proper night with her baby.
Coutinho also revealed she married the father of her baby, Adam Hawksbee, in July, having met him two years ago.
The Tory MP, known to be close to former prime minister Rishi Sunak, grew up in south London, the daughter of an anaesthetist and a GP; her sister is a GP.
She paid tribute to the team who cared for her and her infant, saying they were “these incredibly expert and caring doctors and nurses. I would be dead if it weren’t for them, and so would Rafa. And then the worst part is the same thing you face in Whitehall frankly – the bureaucracy, the silos.”
Coutinho added, “It was incredibly hard for me to see my baby [when he was recovering in the neonatal unit] and, while that wasn’t any individual’s fault, it was because there is a system that is sometimes not geared up to be as humane and compassionate as it can be.
“It took a senior consultant to say that he would take the risk if anything went wrong to be able to make that decision.”
The Indian-origin MP resumed work full-time in September, and spoke of her renewed commitment to public service.
“I think it’s made me more willing to be bold, more willing to take the fight to people,” she told the paper.
She added, “Because I almost lost everything, it also means I know what I have. As long as my family’s OK, I’ve got everything I need.”
