It had been an uncomplicated first pregnancy. Heather Lawrence, then 35, and her partner Lewis had conceived quickly and were looking to becoming parents. "It had been pretty seamless," she said.
"Then it all went wrong within a very short space of time." Ms Lawrence, from Gartcosh in North Lanarkshire, has shared her experience of the sudden and life-threatening complications which led to the loss of her daughter in 2016 as the patient representative behind Edinburgh University's new study into rates of stillbirth and death among expectant mothers admitted to critical care. She had woken up with lower back pain days after reaching the 37th week of her pregnancy and, suspecting she might be in the early stages of labour, took some paracetamol and went back to sleep.
READ MORE: ANALYSIS: Maternal death rates are up 50 per cent - what's going on? No 'new or unusual' cause found to explain spikes in neonatal death rate Warning signs missed in stillbirth tragedy, Fatal Accident Inquiry told When she began vomiting non-stop a few hours later, the couple went to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow where a scan revealed that their unborn baby had died. "It was horrendous," said Ms Lawrence. "I asked 'why has this happened?', but they didn't know.
"Hours later we realised it was a placental abruption - that the placenta had come away from the wall and there was severe internal bleeding happening - but they couldn't see that on the scan." Tests revealed that Ms Lawrence.