A YOUNG COUPLE is demanding answers after the death of their one-month-old baby boy Kaiden.
Petra Rouse, 21, and her boyfriend, Silverson Greenidge, 30, were at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) last night trying to understand how their baby died and why an ambulance was not summoned by his caretakers when he fell ill.
The grieving couple told the DAILY NATION they picked up the baby from the day nursery yesterday evening cold and unresponsive.
“They called me at twenty to four and told me that I need to come to the nursery, that something wrong with the baby and I have to take him to the doctor. I ask, ‘Something like what?’ and they said they didn’t know,” Greenidge explained.
He said he quickly telephoned his girlfriend who was taking a class at the Barbados Community College and relayed the information to her before picking her up.
“We got to the nursery at 4:10 p.m. and an aunty was standing with the baby in her arms,” Petra said.
“I looked at the baby and he had dry blood on his nose and mouth. He was cold and his skin was black and blue. I knew my baby was dead. I tell them he dead but they were in there trying to convince me that the baby still alive,” she said, adding that she frantically took the baby from the caretaker.
“I turning up he eyes, I can’t see no movement; he ain’t blinking back like how he does move he eyes, nothing! He father touch he wrist to see if he gine get a pulse. I touch he belly to see if he was moving. I get nothing and they still trying to tell me, ‘He alive! He alive!” she said as the tears rolled down her cheeks.
The couple said they rushed to the QEH where their child was pronounced dead.
“I can’t believe that my son gone,” an angry Greenidge cried out as he glanced at the tiny, lifeless body. “I wish that was me lying there instead of him.”
Petra also broke down in tears as she explained that yesterday was only the third day that she had taken the baby, her first child, to the St Michael day care because she had to go to school.
“I took him there on Monday and I took him late Tuesday because he had to go to the polyclinic for his four-week check-up. The doctor told me he was in perfect health, so how could he be dead today?” she asked.
She said the boy was normal when she dropped him off at the nursery yesterday morning and had been in good health since he was born.
“They are telling me at the nursery that they fed him, burped him and put him down. If they realised he was sick and bleeding, why didn’t they call an ambulance,” the father asked in distress.
The couple said an official from the nursery telephoned them while at the hospital to enquire about the baby. “We told her the baby dead,” Greenidge said, as he continued to express disbelief.
“Them shoulda call the ambulance if they see blood. I know they would have to know that he was unconscious or something. There is no way that you dealing with children so long and you can’t tell if a child unconscious.”
The couple said they would be making a report to the police and were hoping for a thorough investigation into the matter. (MB)
