Former Pretoria midwife Yolande Maritz Fouchee, charged with assault and culpable homicide, denied responsibility for two babies born with disabilities – one dying shortly after birth and another being declared dead at birth.
IOL reports that she appeared this week in the Gauteng High Court facing 14 charges after claims that she did not heed the risk factors of several of her clients at her You&Me birth clinic in Pretoria East.
It is also claimed she allowed her teenage daughter, who may not be named, to assist her with the births.
Other charges include that she gave some clients the abortion medication Cytotec to drink to induce labour – something described by an expert as being very dangerous to do under the circumstances.
Several women testified that they were given “water with Rescue remedy” to drink, which shortly afterwards led to severe contractions. According to her daughter, who earlier testified for the prosecution, the substance was in fact the abortion remedy.
But Fouchee testified that inducing labour was not a standard practice at her clinic. Cytotec was kept at her clinic, she said, but it was never used in the four cases for which she is standing trial. According to her, the medication is only used in emergency cases, which the four cases she is facing were not.
She said her daughter was not present at all of the births, and that when she was, her role was that of a doula – to assist but not to perform any medical tasks.
Her daughter, she added, had been keen to learn more about pregnancy, birth and newborns, after seeing what the doulas had been doing.
“I started giving her solo chores that needed no supervision over weekends when she was available… she helped to prepare the birth room by filling the birth tub, opening the bed, making tea for clients, helping me clean after births.”
She said when her daughter was 14 and showing more interest in the birthing process, she allowed her “to shadow me during deliveries, with the permission of the birthing couple”, Fouchee said.
In 2016, at 16, her daughter had completed the Nurturing Doula Skills Course and became an officially certified doula, Fouchee said in defence of her daughter’s presence at her birth centre.
While a medical expert earlier testified that Fouchee did not pay attention to the high-risk factors presented by some of her clients, she denied this. She said that with her basic knowledge of doing sonars (obtained during a workshop), she could see the foetuses growing inside the womb.
She conceded she could not diagnose advanced abnormalities, but said that during the births in question, things “mostly went according to plan”. She said she was devastated when one of the babies had died nine days after birth – when the doctors had to switch off the machines that kept him alive.
She was equally traumatised when another baby was declared dead at birth, she said.
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