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The nine-month pregnant woman who lost her baby after a two-hour wait at the National University Hospital (NUH) has spoken up to give her side of the story.

Lee woke up and found herself bleeding

The 37-year-old woman, surnamed Lee, and her husband of the same age, surnamed Tham, sat down with 8world News, which condensed their account in person into a six-minute clip.

Lee retold the sequence of events on Mar. 15, starting from when she saw three bright red drops of blood around her after getting up.

This was when she realised she was bleeding profusely, and she said there was no way of stemming the bleeding.

At that point, Lee was infected with Covid-19, but said she had tested "clear negative" on Mar. 15.

While Lee would have completed serving her isolation by Mar. 13, her Covid-19 tests were still coming back positive.

This caused her to miss two medical examinations, which she rescheduled to Mar. 16.

She had transmitted the virus to Tham, who was unable to accompany Lee to the A&E and also had to stay at home to watch over the couple's two other kids.

Lee said her friend who accompanied her to the hospital was stopped at the entrance and prevented from entering the A&E department.

Went into A&E alone

Lee subsequently went into NUH's A&E department alone, and the paramedic who transferred Lee there informed the NUH healthcare staff of her condition upon her arrival at around 10:30pm.

Once there, Lee claimed none of the NUH healthcare staff attended nor checked in on her.

However, she overheard some nurses saying that there were no more beds in the maternity ward, which was at full capacity, and that she would have to continue to wait.

She also claimed to have overheard another female A&E patient asking a male nurse why she had to wait so long for someone to attend to her.

The male nurse replied and said: "Everyone (referring to the NUH medical staff) is busy, and there are no spare beds, so everyone (the patients) have to wait."

At that point, Lee recounted that she was in extreme pain and felt very weak.

She said she lacked the energy to call for the attention of medical staff to attend to her.

Scans revealed fetus had no heartbeat

Lee said the NUH staff only got around to her at about 12:40am on Mar. 16, and she was wheeled to the maternity ward where the NUH doctors and nurses conducted some checks and scans on her immediately.

She recalled a nurse's remark at that point in time, who said: "Why are you still bleeding?"

The doctor attending to Lee said the ultrasound scan revealed that there was no heartbeat coming from Lee's child, and added that while the heart organ was intact, the doctor repeated that there was no heartbeat after scanning Lee three to four more times.

Doctor apologised that child had passed away

After delivering the news, Lee said the doctor apologised to her and told her that her child had passed away.

The doctor allegedly explained to Lee that she had suffered a placenta abruption, which resulted in an intrauterine fetal death.

Stillborn delivered at 3:15am

Lee remembered asking the doctor if they could resuscitate her child, to which she said the doctor allegedly replied with an immediate and resolute no, with little hesitation.

At around 2am, Lee said she was wheeled into the surgical ward and put under general anaesthesia, where the doctors proceeded to take out her stillborn baby.

According to Lee's certificate of registration of still-birth, the male baby was delivered at 3:15am.

She said she came to and regained consciousness at around 5am, when she saw her stillborn baby, which was placed on her.

Lee remained warded in the hospital until Mar. 20 for a blood transfusion treatment as she had lost an excessive amount of blood.

After Lee was discharged from the hospital, she and Tham decided that they had to "do something" and Tham took to Facebook on Mar. 21 to detail their experience at NUH.

Couple questioned why NUH did not attend to Lee

Tham and Lee questioned NUH's A&E processes, specifically the lack of support provided to Lee and other A&E patients requiring medical attention, especially for patients who were visibly bleeding profusely like Lee.

They said if a similar scenario were to happen, where the NUH staff had seen to Lee immediately and given her the medical support she needed but the baby was still delivered as a stillborn, they would have been more accepting of the event's outcome and would have let the matter rest.

However, the couple decided to pursue the matter publicly on Facebook, as Lee said she found that the way the NUH staff handled the matter was lacking, where a "very serious matter" with "life-threatening" consequences was handled in a "very unprofessional" manner.

Tham's Facebook post went viral almost immediately after it was posted and was shared 4,600 times.

"We don't want the same thing to happen to other mommies"

The couple said they hoped to "create awareness" through their Facebook post to prevent such instances from reoccurring.

"We should do something, we don't want the same thing to happen to other mommies," said Lee.

She added that NUH would not have contacted her if not for Tham's Facebook post.

Tham added that he requested to see the doctors to seek answers and provide feedback before Lee's discharge, but said he was met with the same reply that the doctors were not around or that they were not available.

Tham said he did not have the opportunity to have a face-to-face conversation with NUH's doctors, up to the point of Lee's discharge.

Mothership understands that the hospital called the couple on Mar. 22 to arrange for a call on Mar. 23.

Separately, NUH issued a statement on Mar. 22 where they urged the public not to speculate about the incident and said they were in contact with Lee and Tham.

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Top image screenshot from video from 8world News/Facebook and from Mee Pok Tah/Facebook