Shocked mum sent 100 miles to have her baby

A PREGNANT woman was sent nearly 100 miles away to have her baby after being told the city's maternity ward was full.

Sophie Jacobs, 22, was rushed to the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital when her waters broke. She was terrified for the health of her baby, which was not due for another six weeks.

But to her dismay, Miss Jacobs learned the maternity unit at the hospital was already full and she would have to be sent elsewhere.

Staff at the ward gave her a steroid injection to try to develop the baby's lungs and stop the labour. Others frantically phoned to try to find her a bed elsewhere with facilities for a premature baby.

She was devastated when she learned the nearest place was The Royal Gwent, in Newport, South Wales — 96 miles away.

She said: "My pregnancy was all straightforward until the last few weeks, when I started developing signs of pre-eclampsia.

"When I got to the RD&E, they gave me an injection to try to stop labour.

"They didn't know if it was going to work. They had to find somewhere with a bed.

"They tried everywhere from Cornwall up, and said the nearest place they could find was Newport."

She said: "They put me in an ambulance and I was driven up there. Jason, my partner, had to make his own way there.

"It took ages in the ambulance because of the traffic. I didn't want to go up there, but I didn't have a choice.

"I had the second injection in Newport but it didn't stop the labour and I got more severe signs of pre-eclampsia."

As previously revealed in the Echo, the RD&E has closed its maternity unit twice since 2006 because of overcrowding or staffing issues.

Miss Jacobs ended up having a Caesarean section, and Zachariah was born weighing 4lb 6oz.

She added: "I ended up with a very small baby and we had to stay there for 10 days. Because Zachariah was so small and early he needed to be monitored and cared for on the special care baby unit.

"He was also a little jaundiced so had to spend a few days under the UV light. The staff were lovely but it was horrible because it was such a long way from home. I wanted to be home and close to my friends and family. They kept ringing to see if there was room for us in Exeter, but there never was. After being let down so many times about being transferred back, we put our efforts into concentrating on getting discharged and eventually managed to get home."

Miss Jacobs, a secretary, said her partner Jason North, 36, had been able to stay locally while she was in Newport.

Zachariah, who has a 10-year-old half-sister, Olivia, was born in September and, months on, is healthy and well.

A spokeswoman from the RD&E said: "The incident was the only one of its kind in the last three years and the transfer happened despite our very best efforts to provide more local care.

"It was unfortunate that in the four-hour window that the maternity unit was closed, a patient had to be transferred to another hospital but all the decisions were made with patient safety being our priority," she said.