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Daily Record
Daily Record
National
Paul Drury

MSPs urged to improve maternity services and stop rural babies being born at roadside

Holyrood will this week be urged to stop rural mums-to-be being forced to have babies at the roadside.

Campaigners say maternity services are located so centrally, women in remote areas often can’t reach the hospital in time.

Isabella Vance’s birth ­certificate shows she entered the world on a cold January night on the “A714, at roadend of Cairnhouse Farm, Wigtown”.

Mum Megan McCrone and partner Kieran had to ask her mum to drive her two hours to hospital in Dumfries but had to pull over after an hour while she gave birth in the front seat.

Megan, 26, from Isle of Whithorn, Wigtownshire, said: “I told my mum there was no way we were going to make it to the hospital.

“I needed help when my first baby, Layton, was born so I shudder to think what might have happened if Isabella had needed oxygen.”

Debbie Kelly, from nearby Newton Stewart, was sent home from Dumfries Royal Infirmary after feeling contractions start with her sixth child.

The 41-year-old said: “I broke down in tears. I did not want to go home because I live two hours away.

Debbie Kelly and Edith (Paul Drury/Media Now)

"I got home but I was still having contractions all day.

"My waters broke and I started to push.”

An ambulance was called but had to pull over near Gatehouse on the A75 as Debbie gave birth to daughter Edith.

She added: “I am still distressed by the whole affair.

"My baby could have died.”

Now a petition will go before the Scottish Parliament calling for an independent watchdog.

Retired GP Angela Armstrong said: “What we want is someone independent of government to be a watchdog and be able to say, ‘Is this right or is it not?’”

In 1993, an ambulance crashed while rushing Louise Hill from Skye to hospital in Inverness.

Her unborn baby, a midwife and a paramedic died.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The programme for government set out a commitment to develop a National Centre for Remote and Rural Health and Social Care.”

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