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Parents forced to make gruelling 8-hour daily trip to visit premature twins have kids relocated .. thanks to Daily Records
PREMATURE twins who were sent to a hospital 87 miles away have finally been found beds closer to home – a month after their birth.
Little Harris and Cole Cox’s mum and dad had to travel eight hours on public transport just to spend two hours at the infants’ bedsides every day.
But after the Record highlighted their case, the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley arranged for the boys to be transferred there – much closer to the family’s home in Helensburgh, Argyll.
Last night their dad, David, said: “I appreciate everything the Record has done. I don’t think we would have had a chance of the move without all the publicity in the paper.”
David and his partner Karen Surgenor, both 39, had to leave their home at 9.25am and travel to Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife, using two trains and a bus each way.
After two hours with their babies, they began the long trek back, arriving home at 8pm.
But the couple also have another eight children between them, the youngest of whom is just 14 months old, and four others are still at school.
Self-employed painter and decorator David had found it almost impossible to work with the long journey, only managing a couple of hours a day before setting off on their marathon trek.
The boys were expected to arrive later this month at the RAH by a planned caesarian operation. But on September 23, Karen’s waters broke.
She went to the hospital but there was no room and she was sent to Wishaw General in Lanarkshire.
The twins were then moved to Fife because NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde had no space.
The decision resulted in gruelling 174-mile-round trip every day for their parents.
Scottish Labour’s health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie demanded the health board “urgently relocate the twins to a hospital much nearer the family” and said the problem was caused by “insufficient staffing and special care baby unit beds”.
David added: “The ambulance took Karen and Cole to the RAH first and then it came back for me and Harris.
“It will be so much easier to visit now and we will feel happier being able to ask people to give us a lift when it is only 40 minutes away. “Karen plans to go up during the day on her own now and I’ll go up when I finish work for a couple of hours. It will be good to be able to get back to work. “And with the other children it means we won’t have to try to split ourselves in two. “We will have more time for them too.”