Mother’s Campaign Calls for Greater Attention to Pregnancy Concerns and Scanning

A mother who lost her baby following a stillbirth is campaigning for changes to maternity care, saying pregnant women should feel confident that their concerns will be taken seriously.

Klaudia Cierpial has launched the Listen To Mums campaign after losing her daughter Maya in 2020. She says the experience left her determined to raise awareness about the importance of listening to mothers who believe something is wrong during pregnancy.

Mother Says Her Concerns Were Dismissed

Klaudia was 26 weeks pregnant when she began experiencing severe stomach pain. According to her account, she attended University Hospital Wishaw in Lanarkshire, where medical staff checked her baby's heartbeat but did not carry out an ultrasound scan.

She says she was reassured that everything appeared normal.

Two weeks later, Klaudia experienced severe pain again and contacted the maternity triage team. She claims she was advised to manage the pain with paracetamol.

On April 27, she suffered bleeding and returned to hospital. Doctors carried out an ultrasound scan and discovered that her baby no longer had a heartbeat.

Her daughter Maya was later found to have an umbilical cord abnormality.

The loss had a profound impact on Klaudia and her family. Now, she wants her experience to contribute to wider discussions about pregnancy monitoring and maternity services.

Campaign Focuses on Listening to Mothers

Klaudia's campaign is centred on a simple message: pregnant women should be listened to when they say something does not feel right.

She says many women have contacted her with stories of experiencing symptoms or changes during pregnancy and feeling that their concerns were not fully addressed.

The campaign is not calling for every pregnancy to receive the same level of monitoring. Instead, Klaudia wants greater consideration of additional scans and assessments where there are concerns.

She is also calling for improvements to maternity triage, arguing that women who contact maternity services with worrying symptoms should receive thorough assessments and feel that their concerns have been heard.

Her campaign has attracted more than 11,000 signatures on a UK Government petition, according to the source material.

Why Pregnancy Scans Are Part of the Debate

Ultrasound scans are an important part of pregnancy care. In the UK, pregnant women are routinely offered an ultrasound scan during the first half of pregnancy, including the 20-week anomaly scan.

However, not every woman routinely receives repeated ultrasound scans throughout the remainder of pregnancy. Additional monitoring may be offered when there are particular clinical reasons or when a pregnancy is considered higher risk.

Klaudia believes there should be further discussion about whether additional scanning could identify certain problems earlier in some pregnancies.

Her argument is not that additional scans could prevent every stillbirth. Instead, she wants policymakers and healthcare professionals to examine available evidence and consider whether changes could improve outcomes for some families.

Stillbirth Remains a Devastating Loss

Stillbirth can have a devastating and long-lasting impact on parents and families. Losing a baby during pregnancy or around the time of birth can affect parents emotionally for years, while families may also face difficult questions about what happened.

Klaudia says her motivation comes from wanting to prevent other families from experiencing the same heartbreak.

She has described receiving messages from women who say they experienced reduced fetal movements, pain or other changes and felt they struggled to get the reassurance or assessment they needed.

These experiences form an important part of her campaign, although individual experiences alone cannot establish whether a particular medical intervention would have changed an outcome.

That is why Klaudia says she wants her campaign to be supported by evidence rather than emotion alone.

A Push for Evidence-Based Maternity Care

Over the coming months, Klaudia plans to gather experiences from families across the UK. She intends to use these accounts alongside available evidence to produce a report containing practical recommendations.

The report is expected to be presented to the UK Government as part of a request to review aspects of current maternity guidance.

One of the central themes will be whether healthcare services could provide greater flexibility when a pregnant woman reports worrying symptoms, even when she does not fit established criteria for additional monitoring.

Klaudia says the campaign is not about blaming individual healthcare workers. Instead, she wants to encourage improvements in the way maternity concerns are assessed and communicated.

The Importance of Speaking Up During Pregnancy

Pregnancy can involve many physical changes, and symptoms can have different causes. Some may be relatively common, while others require urgent medical assessment.

For that reason, anyone who is pregnant and worried about symptoms, pain, bleeding, changes in fetal movements or other concerns should contact an appropriate maternity or healthcare service for professional advice.

Women should not rely on online articles or social media posts to diagnose pregnancy complications.

The wider message from Klaudia's campaign is that communication between pregnant women and healthcare professionals matters. A mother's observations about changes in her pregnancy can provide valuable information that healthcare teams can consider alongside clinical assessments.

What the Listen To Mums Campaign Wants

Klaudia's campaign is calling for several areas of maternity care to be examined.

These include greater attention to mothers' concerns, a review of guidance surrounding routine pregnancy scans, and improvements to maternity triage.

She also wants any potential changes to be based on reliable medical evidence.

The campaign comes from a deeply personal experience, but its stated ambition is wider. Klaudia wants families across the UK to have confidence that concerns raised during pregnancy will be considered carefully and assessed appropriately.

Her daughter's death cannot be reversed, but she hopes sharing Maya's story will contribute to discussions about how maternity services can continue to improve.

Ultimately, the campaign asks policymakers and healthcare professionals to consider whether there are opportunities to strengthen pregnancy monitoring and communication without assuming that every stillbirth can be prevented.

For Klaudia, the goal is straightforward: to help give more babies the opportunity to arrive home safely with their families.

Source: The Sun on August 20, 2026.

Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes only. It does not provide medical advice, diagnose pregnancy complications, or establish that additional scans would have prevented any individual stillbirth. Pregnancy concerns should be discussed with a qualified healthcare professional or appropriate maternity service.