Scot’s award-winning 50-year career
BY VIVIENNE AITKEN A 70-YEAR-OLD midwife who has delivered babies on lifeboats, piers and even in a horsebox has been honoured for her incredible career.
Betty MacIntyre has dedicated the last 50 years of her life to delivering hundreds of babies across north Argyll, including the islands of Coll and Tiree.
Now the NHS Highland rural midwife has won the Hero Nurse Award at the NHS Heroes Awards, organised by our sister paper the Daily Mirror.
Betty, from Oban, is so dedicated to her profession that after she was forced into early retirement while battling cancer 10 years ago, she returned to work once she got the all-clear.
She now works as a bank midwife at least three days a week.
Betty, who was also nominated in the midwife category at the Scottish Health Awards, has travelled by car, ferry, helicopter, lifeboat and even quad bike to reach expectant mums in remote communities.
She said: “We’ve had some harrowing journeys going over on the lifeboat and the ferry. But I love the drama of it all.
“It’s a very special job and a joy and privilege to help a baby into the world.”
Betty has been a midwife for so long that she has often delivered three generations of the same family.
Her most unusual delivery was in the back of a horsebox in a hippie community while about six people “smoking long pipes” looked on. After the birth, the dad cut the placenta into pieces and they all ate a bit.
The NHS Heroes Awards will be shown on STV on Monday at 8.30pm.