When Theo Clarke saw her newborn daughter, the initial rush of joy was short-lived. Within moments the baby had been taken out of her arms and medics were rushing Clarke down a hospital corridor towards an operating theatre to try to stop her bleeding to death.
An epidural during her 40-hour labour meant that Clarke wasn’t able to have a general anaesthetic and was awake for the two-hour operation to repair a third-degree tear — not that anyone had bothered to explain the injury to the first-time mother.
“I thought I was going to die,” says Clarke, 38, Conservative MP for Stafford. “I literally thought my husband was going to be a single dad and I wasn’t going to meet my daughter.”
• I was
