Dad delivers baby after NHS refuses to send out any midwives

A BUSINESSMAN was forced to deliver his baby daughter himself after staff on a flagship hospital hotline refused to send a midwife.

Briony Fugard agreed to have a home birth after having her first two children in hospital, and managers at the award-winning Labour Line service run by their NHS trust in Hampshire had arranged to send two midwives when she went into labour.

But when her company director husband William, 46, called to say the baby was on its way, one was dispatched – only for operators to turn her back because the couple lived over the border in Berkshire.

Despite ‘ screaming down the phone’ for help with his wife in agony, after what Mr Fugard described as a scene ‘ akin to the Middle Ages’ he was left holding what he described as a ‘grey, seemingly lifeless baby’ for an hour until an ambulance arrived.

Fortunately, baby Dorothy – a sister for Betty, four, and Bert, two – is now doing well. The trust has reportedly apologised for the mix-up after admitting the couple do in fact live within the catchment area.

But the family say they remain traumatised by the unsupervised birth, and are calling for Labour Line to be suspended until they receive answers as to what went wrong.

A project run by local ambulance and maternity services, Labour Line – the first of its kind in the country – puts pregnant women through to a midwife at a 24-hour call centre when they go into labour.

Set up in 2013, it won a Royal College of Midwives Excellence Award last year after being credited with handling 18,000 calls, reducing unnecessary calls to labour wards or emergency services.

The scheme is now being copied by other NHS trusts. However the Fugards say their experience casts doubt on its effectiveness. Mr Fugard told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘It was seriously traumatic – I can’t stress what hell it was. We were cut loose.

‘They could hear what was happening but didn’t have sufficient humanity to send someone. If anything had gone wrong we wouldn’t have had any idea what to do. We were just left sitting on the bed holding his grey, seemingly lifeless baby for an hour before an ambulance turned up.’

The couple’s eldest children were all born in hospital. But midwives were apparently ‘very keen’ for them to consider a home birth.

Just a week before Dorothy arrived, a community midwife visited their home to confirm the arrangements. However when Mr Fugard called Labour Line to say his wife was in labour, operators said his home over the Berkshire border near Tabley was outside its catchment area.

He was later told a midwife had been dispatched only to be turned back mid-journey. Mr Fugard said an operator admitted listening in over the phone as he struggled to deliver Dorothy himself. ‘When I picked up the phone again to tell her I’d just delivered a baby, she said “I know, we heard”,’ he said.

He insisted ‘basic morality’ should have prompted her to send help, adding: ‘It would only have taken one complication for there to have been a serious problem.’

Mary Edwards, of Hampshire Hospitals Foundation Trust, said she was ‘very sorry that we did not provide the support we should have done’. South Central Ambulance Service, which helps runs Labour Line, said it would not be possible to look into the couple’s claims over the bank holiday weekend.

‘A scene akin to the Middle Ages’