A young expecting mum has claimed that a hospital nurse told her to flush her stillborn baby away after she went to the loo during induced labour and the baby fell into the toilet bowl.

Fernanda Ademek, aged 22, sought medical help in the Brazilian municipality of Bombinhas on Friday, 3rd September after she felt that her 23-week unborn baby was no longer moving.

She was immediately transferred to a hospital in the nearby city of Balneario Camboriu, where she claimed it took an hour for her to be seen and two hours for an ultrasound to be performed.

The ultrasound confirmed that her unborn baby had died inside the womb, and Fernanda was then given medicine to induce labour. She began to feel severe pain the following day.

She said: “The pain was out of the ordinary and at around noon, a nurse came and did a pelvic exam and said it was nothing, it wasn’t the baby coming out.”

Fernanda said she then went to the toilet where she ended up having the baby, which fell into the toilet bowl.

She said: “Because of her saying I wasn’t in labour, I went to the toilet and my son fell into the toilet bowl. I fell into despair, my husband too, we didn’t know what to do. He started to shout and call for someone.

“The nurse came back, lifted me up, and said in these exact words ‘flush, dad, flush’. My husband, without understanding and in shock with everything and me crying in despair, did what she ordered.”

Fernanda said that only after instructing her husband to flush the toilet did the nurse seek medical advice. According to Fernanda, she also tried to pass the blame onto others.

Fernanda said: “She left to look for the doctor and I heard her saying ‘the father flushed the toilet'”. She also said the nurse also tried to blame another two nurses for what had happened.

The toilet eventually had to be smashed apart to recover Fernanda’s baby. She said: “He narrowly avoided reaching the septic tank. He was inside the placenta, so it was too big to pass.”

In addition to not receiving adequate medical care, Fernanda also said the hospital did not hand over her baby so she could bury him.

The hospital has since said it has launched an internal investigation into the incident.