Baby was left brain damaged after three-week delay in delivery at Leeds hospital
The parents of a boy who was born with brain damage that could have been "entirely avoided" say they hope lessons will be learned following legal action against the hospital responsible.
Seb Collins was diagnosed with cerebral palsy after a three-week delay in delivering him at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust in 2017.
He has a number of disabilities including motor and speech difficulties and needs additional support at school.
The trust has now admitted that Seb's brain injury would have been "entirely avoided" if the correct course of action had been taken.
Seb's mother, Harriet, said: "It’s still hard to talk about what happened around the end of my pregnancy. We assumed that because Seb was being closely monitored that there would be no problems.
"But as soon as Seb was delivered I knew something wasn’t right and seeing him in the first few days on a ventilator was particularly hard."
'We hope we can help prevent others going through what we have'
A scan carried out 35 weeks into pregnancy showed that Seb was suffering a lack of oxygen and nutrients.
It meant he should have been delivered by 37 weeks, but Mrs Collins was allowed to progress to full-term and Seb was born at 40 weeks.
Mrs Collins said he had since grown into a "determined little boy" but struggled with everything from speech to mobility, pain, fatigue and balance.
She said: "It’s a hard balance to have a totally can-do attitude for Seb while not putting him through too much pain or effort which, due to his communication, can be difficult to gauge.
"We’re committed to helping him live a full and fulfilled life as independently as possible. We’re amazed at his resilience and honoured that we get to witness it every day.
"We just hope that by speaking out we can help prevent others going through what we have."
The trust has now apologised, but Rachelle Mahapatra, the lawyer representing the family, said: "While we welcome the trust’s co-operation and apology, it’s now vital that lessons are learned to improve maternity safety for other families."
Dr Phil Wood, the chief medical officer for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said staff were "extremely saddened" about what had happened.
He added: "We have undertaken a full investigation into the care offered to Mrs Collins, the outcome of which has led to significant learning and improvements in care and safety.
"Over the past few years we have put in place a number of changes, including employing a Consultant lead for the fetal assessment unit, training more midwife sonographers, instigating regular clinical audits and reviews of scans and holding teaching sessions about baby heartbeat listening devices, and their interpretation.
"We also launched a new dedicated consultant-led small baby clinic that cares for small babies prior to 37 weeks and reviews babies with abnormal heartbeat audio before 37 weeks, even in the context of normal growth."