The Yolande Fouchee Case: Trust, Consent and Birth Trauma

Choosing the person who will care for you during pregnancy and childbirth requires a ridiculous amount of trust. You are handing someone access to your body, your baby, your medical decisions, and one of the most vulnerable experiences of your life. That is what makes the case of former Pretoria midwife Yolande Maritz Fouchee so disturbing.

Fouchee operated You and Me Midwife led Maternity Care in Pretoria, South Africa, and had built a successful practice with a strong reputation. Women sought her out specifically for midwife led care and, in many cases, a birth experience with minimal medical intervention. According to evidence presented during her criminal case, however, what was happening inside that practice looked very different from the experience those patients believed they had chosen.

One detail immediately stopped us in our tracks. Several women testified that while they were in labor, Fouchee gave them something to drink that they believed was water containing a “rescue remedy.” According to the court’s findings, Fouchee secretly administered water mixed with Cytotec or oxytocin to induce or augment labor without the mothers’ knowledge or consent.

For nurses, there are about a thousand alarms going off in that sentence.

Medication administration requires more than simply getting a substance into somebody’s body. The patient should know what they are receiving, why they are receiving it, what the plan is, and what choices they have. That becomes even more significant during labor, when a patient may already be exhausted, scared, in severe pain, and relying heavily on the person providing their care.

One of the families discussed in the episode was that of Alysia von Kloeg and her first child, Noah. According to her testimony, she had raised concerns during pregnancy about her baby’s development but was reassured. When her water broke at 39 weeks, she went to Fouchee’s birth center. She testified that she was approximately two centimeters dilated, drank what she believed was the rescue remedy, and was told roughly ten minutes later that she had progressed to eight centimeters.

Noah was born in serious condition. He was eventually transferred to Steve Biko Academic Hospital and died nine days later in his mother’s arms.

And Noah was not the only child at the center of the criminal case. The court found Fouchee’s conduct was connected with three other babies being born with cerebral palsy. Another baby was stillborn, although Fouchee was not convicted of culpable homicide in that death.

As the story unfolds, the issue becomes much larger than medication.

Another family testified that a laboring woman became exhausted, pale, and weak and asked to be taken to a hospital. According to the testimony, Fouchee refused and gave the family incorrect information about whether a hospital would perform a C section once labor had progressed. The family later described an attempted forceps delivery before eventually insisting on a transfer.

That part of the episode leads us into one of the conversations we think matters most outside of this specific criminal case: you are allowed to advocate for yourself.

You can ask what medication is being handed to you. You can ask what is hanging in the IV bag. You can ask why something is being recommended. You can ask about alternatives. You can refuse treatment. You can ask for another opinion. You can tell your nurse that you want to see the medication before it is administered.

That is not disrespectful. That is your healthcare.

Healthcare professionals are human. Mistakes happen even when everybody involved is acting in good faith. Asking questions adds another set of eyes to the process. In this case, however, the court found something far more serious than an accidental medication error.

Then there was Fouchee’s daughter.

According to trial reporting, her daughter testified that she had been around births at the clinic from approximately age ten. By 15, she had been removed from school to be homeschooled and was helping more regularly despite having no nursing training. She testified that she performed nursing functions and, in some cases, was instructed by her mother to give women Cytotec diluted in water and tell them it was a rescue remedy.

Her testimony became an important part of the prosecution’s case.

Fouchee maintained her innocence and testified in her own defense. The Gauteng High Court ultimately rejected her account and convicted her on all 14 charges, including culpable homicide, assault charges, fraud, and employing an unqualified person. In May 2026, the court imposed sentences totaling 66 years, but because several were ordered to run concurrently, her effective sentence became 23 years.

One of the most difficult images from sentencing involved Alysia holding a teddy bear containing Noah’s ashes.

That image brings the whole story back to what was actually lost behind all of the court testimony and medical discussion. These women trusted someone to help them safely meet their babies.

For some of them, that moment can never be given back.

Cases like this understandably damage trust in healthcare. We work inside the system and know it is imperfect. We also know the overwhelming majority of healthcare workers do not enter these jobs intending to hurt people.

But trust should never require blind obedience.

You are still allowed to ask questions. You are still allowed to understand the plan. And you are still the person in charge of what happens to your own body.