Perfect timing as island mums both give birth
IT is quite a coincidence in a community of only 350 people, where few births are ever recorded.
Two mothers-to-be from a remote island took the same ferry to the same hospital – and gave birth at exactly the same time.
And the respective parents had even settled on the same name, Alexander, if the new arrivals were boys.
Angela Johnston and Karen Daily, both 38, sailed on the same ferry from Stronsay, Orkney, to deliver at the Balfour Hospital in Kirkwall at exactly 11.36pm, last Tuesday, November 13. Mrs Daily had a girl, Mackenzie Joy, while Mrs Johnston had a boy, named Alexander Ronnie James.
His delighted father Iain Johnston, 43, a butcher, told how the couples met. He said: ‘We’d come in on the same boat, as the ladies had to be town-bound ahead of birth. Karen told us they had their names sorted – Mackenzie for a girl, Alexander for a boy.
‘We didn’t let on, but Alexander was the name we had chosen if we had a boy. We didn’t announce a name straightaway, but saw Mr Daily posted on Facebook, “Welcome to the family Mackenzie Joy Daily”, and we were delighted to have free run at our boy’s name.’
Mrs Johnston, who works at the island’s shop, said that the mothers were due the same week, but a day apart. Mrs Daily, a mother of five, from Indiana in the US, moved to Stronsay this year when her husband Scott became locum minister at the island church.
She wrote on social media: ‘Our babies were born the very same minute – from a small island where generally not more than a few babies are born each year.’
Midwife Pamela Halliday said: ‘It is unusual to have two babies born at the same time in the Balfour, never mind two from the same island, which made it very special.’