A SECOND family has gone through the trauma of having a stillborn baby following a controversial shake-up of maternity services, The Northern Echo can reveal.

Clare Storey joined the call for full medical and surgical cover to be reinstated at Bishop Auckland General Hospital, which was downgraded to a midwife-led unit two weeks ago.

Mrs Storey, 32, from Shildon, County Durham, was turned away from the unit on May 13 when she kept an appointment she thought would lead to a safer birth for her daughter, Chloe Olivia.

Because the baby was lying in breech position, she went to the hospital believing medical staff would attempt to turn the child.

But with no emergency medical or surgical cover available at Bishop Auckland, she was given another appointment for May 18, at Darlington Memorial Hospital where emergency facilities were available if the procedure had triggered her labour.

By then the baby had died and Mrs Storey had to undergo the distress of a stillbirth.

She said: "Two days after the first appointment, I realised the baby wasn't moving and went to Darlington.

"They couldn't find a heartbeat and I was told the baby was dead, but I was sent home again and had to go back on the Monday morning to be induced.

"When she was born, they said the cord was wrapped around her neck three times.

"I can't help thinking that if they had turned the baby at Bishop Auckland and I had gone into labour, she would at least have had a chance if there had been emergency facilities there."

Mrs Storey added: "Why didn't they send me to Darlington straight away? They should never have taken everything away from Bishop. It is too much of a risk to have everything at Darlington and nothing at Bishop."

Mrs Storey said her husband, Paul, and children Stacey, 14, Daniel, ten and eight-year-old Jessica, were devastated by the baby's death.

Bishop Auckland MP Derek Foster has asked for a report on Mrs Storey's case, as well as that of Andrea Harrison, from Newton Aycliffe, whose unborn daughter, Olivia, died on a car journey from Bishop Auckland to Darlington two days after the system was introduced.

Hospital managers are investigating both stillbirth incidents.