Baby born in a layby af ter 999 crew is sent to wrong address
A MOTHER-TO-BE was forced to give birth in a layby after an ambulance failed to turn up – because call handlers sent it to an address eight miles away. Laura Ross and husband Darren ended up driving themselves to the hospital, with little Kier arriving during the journey.
As heavy snow came down, Mrs Ross gave birth in the family Volvo while parked in a layby on the A9 between their home in Aviemore and Raigmore Hospital, Inverness.
Her 999 call had been diverted to a control room in South Queensferry, West Lothian, because the nearest centre in Inverness was busy.
A call handler there directed the ambulance to a junction of the A938 in Carrbridge instead of the couple’s home, which is just off the A9 in Aviemore.
Mr Ross, 31, said local staff would have been familiar with the area and been able to provide better instructions.
He said: ‘If something bad had happened it could have been very serious. I would hate for it to happen to someone else.
‘I feel sorry for the paramedics and the girl in the call handling centre as she did not know where [we were].
‘It’s obviously because of cutbacks but we are talking about people’s lives – Kier might not have been here if there had been complications.’
When the ambulance failed to show, Mr and Mrs Ross were driven to hospital by her mother, Maureen Chisholm, who helped to deliver Kier in the early hours of last Friday.
Mr Ross told how another ambulance call handler talked him through the delivery.
He said: ‘She was amazing but did not know where we were even though we were just off the A9. She apologised but it was obviously not great.’ He added: ‘As I opened the door I could see the baby’s head. It was snowing heavily by now. I was quite stressed by this point.’
Mrs Chisholm cut the cord and the ambulance crew arrived in time to deliver the placenta.
Amazingly Mrs Ross, 36, did not panic when she realised she would have to give birth in the car instead of in hospital.
She said: ‘I was fine and I knew what I needed to do.
‘I went with what my body was telling me to do.’
A spokesman for the Scottish Ambulance Service said a crew had been dispatched to the correct area by the call handler in South Queensferry, but the exact address had not been properly pinpointed by their global positioning system (GPS) due to the remote location.
She said the call had been diverted to the Central Belt as part of the service’s default safety protocol when all of the call handlers in Inverness are busy.
Mrs Chisholm said: ‘If the call had been taken in Inverness the person answering it would have known exactly where we were.
‘What would have happened if it had been someone having a heart attack rather than a baby being born?’
Both Mrs Ross and Kier, who weighed in at 7lb 12oz, are in good health.