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The mother of a baby who died after swallowing a battery has given emotional evidence at an inquest into her daughter’s death.

Isabella Rees was found in her cot, covered in blood, after being sent home from Melbourne’s Sunshine Hospital three times in 2015, shares Yahoo7.

The coroner is now seeing what can be done to prevent other families suffering a similar tragedy.

The young girl was just 14 months old when she died after swallowing a button battery that lodged in her esophagus.

Her parents took her to Sunshine Hospital when she appeared to have trouble breathing.

Over the next three days the baby girl vomited and had a fever.

Hospital failed to notice the battery

During a second hospital visit, her mother Allison found part of a water balloon in her nappy.

“I was very concerned and focused about what she had swallowed but they told me it was passing through her and there was nothing to worry about,” she revealed in court.

The court heard the hospital believed there were inconsistencies in Ms Rees’ account – something she disputes.

“Every time we went we were just disregarded and turned away. They never believed us, they just weren’t listening,” she said.

On February 4, Bella’s mother woke at 5am to find her little girl in her cot soaked in blood.

They rushed her to hospital, where an X-Ray revealed a round object – a button battery – inside the child’s body.

She died on the operating table.

“I was saying ‘come on Bell, stay with us, come on angel, don’t leave us yet,” Ms Rees said.

“We stood with her for 10 minutes and held her hands and then they called time of death.”

Mrs Rees said she is not looking to blame anyone over her daughter’s death, but wants to educate the public and prevent a similar tragedy from happening again.

The mum has started a campaign called Bella’s Footprints – which educates parents on the dangers of button batteries.

The inquest will run for another four days with 16 more witnesses to be called upon.

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  • It is really quite scary how often this is misdiagnosed.

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  • This an horrific story – the family must be devastated.

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  • How heartbreaking! For this reason, out of fear, I keep things that have button batteries away or up high. Luckily most have a screw holding them in now however I found my old calculator in my desk drawer did not have a screw on the battery compartment! It was really old so guess it was pre this safety change

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  • Poor family. Dear little girl should have been treated at hospital correctly and a different outcome may have been. Tragic.

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  • Oh sooo sad, such a terrible tragedy. RIP Sweet Isabella .

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  • Aw how sad is this and how hard it must be for the parents to feel the hospital never took them serious and waved them away.

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  • RIP little one – your mummy is trying to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.

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  • So unprofessional on the behalf of the hospital the baby could have been saved if they had done some X-rays

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  • Terrible that they didn’t do an x-ray, though most things requiring batteries these days have a tiny little screw. There isn’t much more manufacturers can do to minimize the chance of this happening

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  • Absolutely terrible. It wasn’t clear what the girl had swallowed. They could have done an X-Ray immediately. Sweetie. :-(

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  • My heart goes out to this poor family. I hope the hospital is able to get to the bottom of what went wrong and this never happens to another family.

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  • How awful. To lose your baby and have to re live it all over again is truly heart breaking. The dangers of having these batteries around kids has been public for quite a while now. Supervise!

    Reply

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