AHAMUD ETWAREE squeezed his wife's hand and told her "don't worry" as she went in for a caesarian section to give birth to their twins.
Wife Rosida, 45, was worried but excited as she headed in for the operation at Mayday (now Croydon University) hospital to deliver Nuha and Nabila on June 25, 2010, Mr Etwaree recalled.
The 42-year-old, from Thornton Heath, said: "She was so scared when she was pregnant. 'How can someone operate on you and you feel nothing?' she said. I held her hand and said 'You do not need to be scared now; I am here."
Mrs Etwaree bled to death hours after the operation after she suffered an internal haemorrhage and staff at the hospital failed to respond properly.
"No-one understands each other when the mother is gone," said Mr Etwaree, recalling the awful aftermath of his wife's death. "No-one understands each other at that time. You don't know what is going on in the house,"
On Tuesday the father, who has since remarried, agreed an undisclosed financial settlement with Croydon Health Services NHS Trust which in 2012 accepted liability for his wife's death. She was one of three women who died over a two-month period while in the care of maternity services at the same hospital, lawyers for the family said.
Prosecutors are now looking into whether to bring criminal charges against the trust over the death, after the Croydon Coroner took the rare step of asking police to investigate.
Lawyers for Mr Etwaree said the hospital admitted the death was the result of a 'Never Event' – problems which the NHS says are simply "unacceptable and eminently preventable".
Failings in Mrs Etwaree's care included poor supervision of junior doctors during the operation, poor monitoring of her condition afterwards, and staff failed to follow its own procedures on declaring a haemorrhage.
Mr Etwaree recalled repeatedly raising concerns about his wife before a doctor put in a crash call at about 7pm and "about 30" staff rushed to her bedside. He added: "At about 9pm they said 'We lost her'. I sat down in the ward and said to myself: 'Is that a reality; is it happening to me?
"And I said to myself, My God I have got six children now. How am I going to raise them, who is going to look after them?"
His wife never got the chance to hold her two twins, as she felt too weak to do so after the birth.
Twin Nabila was taken to a specialist Brompton hospital to deal with a heart defect diagnosed before birth. She died two years later from that problem, a fate doctors had warned her parents about.
Former delivery driver Mr Etwaree was working two jobs, from 3am until 5pm, before his wife's death. He quit to raise the couple's children: twin Nuha, now 3, Nadim, 18, Nadia, 16, Nadir, 12, and Nadil, 9.
All the children were born at Mayday hospital and Nuha was the only one with complications. Mr Etwaree said he did not immediately assume the hospital was at fault over his wife's death, thinking what happened may have been "natural".
But he started to ask questions later on, encouraged by his new wife, Ishrat, whom he married in 2012, and doubts were also raised by the Croydon Coroner.
Describing his late wife as a "great mother who did everything for us," Mr Etwaree added he hoped to see "justice" done over her death.
He added: "I don't want anyone else to go through what we went through in the past three and a half years.
"I do not want anyone to suffer in the same way we have been suffering."
