‘Didn’t remember it’s Christmas’ - Mom grieves daughter who died while giving birth

Little Zyaire is just two weeks old today, but he already has his own personality - staying awake at nights and cracking little smiles for his grandmother, Christine Campbell.

He has an incredibly huge appetite and spends most of his days sleeping. The little one has no idea that his 14-year-old mother, Anna-Shay Campbell, died during childbirth at the Spanish Town Hospital on Tuesday, December 10.

Although extremely grateful that her little blessing is home, Campbell said she is still gripped with grief.

"I am stressed. I cried all night last night (Saturday), and one of the time I took him up and feed him and I told him that his mama loves him, but she just couldn't come home with him. Zyaire looks just like my daughter when she was a baby. He has her hair and her complexion and everything. Sometimes just for me to feel better, I just tell myself that she reincarnate through him. I don't feel any better from the day she died. We were inseparable," Campbell said.

As many families are making final preparations for Christmas dinner, Campbell said all celebrations have been marred by her daughter's untimely death.

"I honestly don't even remember that Wednesday is Christmas, because I am not celebrating it. Mi and Anna had planned Christmas eno, because we knew she would have baby by then. We planned to cook nice food, buy a cake and just enjoy ourselves. She likes the LED lights, so she wanted that instead of the pepper lights in her room. All of this just rough because eight days after Anna died, my aunt died at that same hospital as well. Mi miss mi daughter, and mi don't know how mi a go live without har. A big part of mi gone," Campbell said.

She recalled the last hours she spent with Anna-Shay, who, she said, was in an upbeat mood although she was showing signs of labour.

"Both of us were jolly the Sunday before, and she ate about four times the dinner she would normally eat. She complimented my cooking that evening. But by Monday she was in pain, as she was dilating from Saturday. But on Saturday she wasn't really feeling any pain, and I just didn't know that when I was taking Anna out the house to carry her to hospital she wouldn't come home. I didn't know she wouldn't get a chance to even get a glimpse of her baby," Campbell said. She said that she always begged God to spare her life so that she could work enough for Anna-Shay to attend college.

"Some people a tell mi say mi must put our her clothes and do all I can to protect the baby. If the spiritual world exist, how mi must put out mi daughter out a road make she roam? Because dat a go mean she nuh have a place at home any more," she added

Campbell strongly believes that her daughter was treated unkindly and neglected because of her age. She added that she was also taken aback when she found Anna-Shay's blood-saturated nightgown among her belongings.

"Mi want to know why dem have to pack up those, and if nuh janitor not at the hospital, because I didn't want to see that. When mi get her bag, the way mi stress I didn't even open the bag; it was when the place start smell stink and mi a wonder what it was," Campbell said.

An investigation has been launched into the circumstances surrounding the teenager's death. Speaking after touring the Spanish Town Hospital last week, Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton said the matter was currently under investigation. The hospital authorities are expected to produce a full report on the incident within six months, after which it will go to the regional body for further action.

"Based on my interaction with the mother, I believe that more could have been done, and should have been done, to provide her at least with a level of comfort, while recognising the distress she was in," the minister said.