Trinidad: Infant dies at Mt Hope — Parents allege negligence, say ‘They Broke Her During Birth’

Trinidad and Tobago: In a shocking development, a couple in Trinidad and Tobago are seeking to sue Mount Hope Women’s Hospital after their one-week-old baby girl died on March 29, 2025. The father of the child Johann Lezama, through Facebook, shared his heartbreaking story, slamming the hospital staff for negligence pre- and post-delivery.  

According to the information, Lezama and his wife Shanice Allen Lezama gave birth to their first child, Serenity, on March 22 but just a week later she died due to what they claim is negligence on the part of the hospital’s doctors. 

While sharing the incident, Johann said that his wife was admitted to Mt Hope on March 17 for bleeding and the doctor said that she in preterm labour and already 2cm dilated. He said that his wife was admitted and on March 19, a cervix stick was performed on her as she was 3cm dilated by then and was bleeding daily as she was experiencing contradictions and pain.  

After the surgery, the husband said that she was placed on complete bed rest but for the next two days, no doctor came to check on her and despite her continuous complaints of pain and bleeding, only nurses were coming to administer antibiotics. 

Lezama said that on March 22, his wife’s water broke around 3 am and by 3:30 am, she was taken to the birth ward. “Despite being just 27 weeks pregnant, with the baby in a footling breech position, doctors proceeded with a vaginal delivery. No emergency C-section was conducted despite her cries. No proper explanation. Up until that point, our baby was healthy and well and by 10:00 PM, she began pushing. I was in the room the entire time,” he claimed.  

According to him, the child got stuck in the birth canal-from her waist to her head- for over half an hour following which the doctors started to panic and began pulling harder as they knew time was running out.  

The doctors managed to get her out and she was delivered 20 hours after the labour began and was immediately rushed to the NICU. The father said that for the next seven days, they visited her daily, but she barely moved and on March 29, she passed away.  

Following the child’s death, the parents asked for an autopsy which was conducted in Mt Hope and the doctors claimed she died from “complications of prematurity.” However, the father was not satisfied and conducted a second autopsy at a private hospital which revealed that the newborn child suffered a traumatic spinal injury along with severe spinal nerve damage, liver trauma, bleeding in the brain and multiple internal organ haemorrhages, all of which were caused by a traumatic breech delivery.  
 

“They broke her body during birth and never told us. She was essentially paralyzed,” said the heartbroken father.  

He further added that the trauma did not end there as post-delivery, a doctor pulled on the umbilical cord while the placenta was still inside which resulted the cord to burst inside her. The doctor then tried to manually remove the placenta while the mother screamed in pain- and failed. Another doctor had to intervene and remove it by hand, added the father.  

The father then claimed that no ultrasound was done on the baby’s mother, and she was discharged without being properly examined.  

He said that he had to visit a private doctor who found retained products still inside the mother’s womb and he referred her back to Mt Hope where she was awarded for more than two days and was provided with medication but when it didn’t work, they sent her back home. 

The father expressed his frustration and anger with the doctors and said, “I am now fully convinced that something is deeply wrong with the hospital’s operating procedures.” 

He slammed the doctors for showing such negligence with both the baby and the mother and he called upon the government to take strict and necessary actions.