Mum who sustained injury to anal sphincter giving birth which was unnoticed by doctors suffered ‘degrading’ incontinence

A mum of two who sustained an extreme tear and “catastrophic injury” to her internal and external anal sphincter among other complications after giving birth to her eldest son, which was not recognised by doctors at the time, now has to wear absorbent underwear every day eight years on.

Brittany Dryden, 40, a virtual assistant who lives in Brighton, West Sussex, with her husband and two children, who she does not wish to name, needed stitches after giving birth to her eldest in 2016 as she had a small tear on her vaginal canal.

However, doctors at the Royal Sussex County Hospital failed to examine her rectum, and the midwife who carried out the repair with stitches ended up missing the extent of the injury and failed to see that it extended to the rectum.

Once she got home, Brittany was in intense pain, and said passing a bowel movement was more painful than giving birth but she was reassured this was normal and would subside.

She then discovered her stitches were infected, and was told to do Kegel exercises after telling her doctor she was losing control of flatulence.

When giving birth to her second son just over a year later, a tear in her perineum and rectum which she sustained during her first birth was made even worse after having a second vaginal birth with a large baby.

But Brittany was not told about this until she visited a specialist in 2021, and she was led to believe that what she had experienced was an unfortunate complication of labour.

This resulted in Brittany becoming incontinent and has impacted her physically, mentally and intimately – she thinks she is “hideous and broken with no dignity”.

Brittany will have a stoma bag fitted once her children are older, then proceeding with major surgery to attempt to regain some continence, and is in the process of pursuing legal action against the NHS for medical negligence.

Brittany told PA Real Life: “I have to tell every person that I work with just in case I get caught out – when I drive with friends they all know that if I say ‘stop and pull over’ it’s an emergency. I only have between 30 seconds to five minutes to find a toilet or I will mess myself.

“We live a 10-minute walk from school, and I’ve been half way, suddenly needed to go, and had to knock on a stranger’s house to use their bathroom.

“I’ve been stuck in traffic and had no choice but to mess myself in the car, with my kids in the back seat, because we haven’t been able to pull over.

“If I have diarrhoea I have less than 10 seconds of warning – which means I can’t leave the house.

“I am terrified of getting a tummy bug because it means soiling bed clothes, towels, and myself. I have no control of my bowels and after every episode I have to shower and put on new clothes, it’s horrific and degrading.”

After being in labour for almost 40 hours, in September 2016, Brittany gave birth to her eldest son, and the surgeon decided she needed stitches as it appeared there had been a small tear on her vaginal canal.

Brittany was then left with a midwife, instead of a surgeon, to do the repair.

Brittany recalled: “While she was stitching me up she was touching the walls, light switches, and instruments, then touching my open wound, there were bloody handprints on the walls and I was getting concerned about hygiene and asked ‘Should you be touching all that?’

“She just brushed me off and carried on.

“I was covered in blood and birthing fluid, and asked if I could have a shower and she said ‘no’, so I laid in my own dried sticky blood for a couple of hours.”

Brittany asked for additional pain medicine as she felt she was in a lot of pain, but was told “you just gave birth, it will hurt for a little while” and was discharged the following day, with no one examining her or looking at her stitches.

After being home for around two days, Brittany had her first bowel movement, which was bloody, “hurt more than giving birth”, and made her cry as she was in so much pain.

Brittany told her midwife this, and was reassured it was normal, but a few days later, the midwife noticed green discharge and that the stitches were infected, so she was prescribed antibiotics and was told to wash herself with an at-home antiseptic.

Brittany’s pain began to reduce but she started to notice that she lost all control of her flatulence.

“I would just be sitting down and air would just escape from me, but it would come up through my vulva, and I was like ‘that’s not how that works’,” Brittany said.

“I told the doctor about my flatulence coming up through the front and he just said I needed to do Kegel exercises and keep up with them.

“I asked if he could examine me and he said ‘no’, and that it was a normal post-birth experience.”

Brittany was then referred to a physiotherapist but by the time her appointment came around in 2018, she was pregnant with her second baby, and they said to come back after the second birth.

In 2021, Brittany was told by a specialist in London that when giving birth to her first child, doctors should have examined her back passage to check there were no internal rectum tears.

Brittany added: “Another doctor at the Royal Sussex flippantly told me that if I didn’t want vaginal problems I should have had a C-section, as if it was my fault.”

The injury meant that Brittany lost all control of her bowel movements, and was the cause of her uncontrollable flatulence, which continues to this day.

The physical realities of this impact Brittany mentally – she now thinks “every day is an embarrassment”, sees herself as “hideous with no dignity”, and her condition has affected her “sexual identity and physical relationship” with her husband.

Brittany also suffered from postpartum depression, anxiety disorder, and depression following the injury.

Going forward, Brittany’s only options are to either live with this condition or to have a stoma bag fitted for six to 12 months and undergo major surgery to attempt to lessen the severity of the incontinence, and then attempt to reverse the stoma.

As this surgery will physically impact her and her family for up to or in excess of a year, Brittany is waiting until her children are older and more independent before undergoing the surgery.

Brittany is in the process of taking legal action, with the help of Slater and Gordon, against the NHS for medical negligence as the entire experience has been “so traumatic, and dehumanising.”

A spokesperson for University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust said: “We offer our sincere sympathies to Ms Dryden for her experience.

“Whilst we cannot comment publicly on anyone’s care, we are investigating the concerns the family have raised with us and will make any improvements we can, if anything could have been done differently.”