COMMUNITY
BABY ABIGAIL MAKES MULL HISTORY Lochbuie baby Abigail Holland has made hospital history on Mull. A photograph of the tot, who is on record as the first baby to be born at Craignure Hospital since it was built eight years ago, is now framed and up on its walls to mark the special occasion. Staff who helped have had another delivery since – this time of cupcakes, sent as a thank you by Abigail’s family. Abigail’s debut four weeks early into the big wide world was dramatic to say the least – it involved a stormy night, paramedics negotiating 50 miles of bumpy single track, a James Bond style RIB dash from Oban, two medi-helicopters, a neo-natal critical care team and a Sea King coastguard rescue to Prestwick Airport. After all of that and a week of special care miles away from Mull in Ayrshire at Crosshouse Hospital, Abigail is now back home in Lochbuie with her family. Grateful mum Alison, proud dad Grant and big sisters Lucille, seven, and Jessica aged two all doing well. Abigail was born the day after doctors at an Oban scan agreed to induce her in a fortnight’s time at 38 weeks because she was already so big.
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them to Paisley. But Abigail ‘Neither of the was not going It was James two nurses or to wait that long Bond style,’ said the doctor at – back home dad Grant who Craignure had that night Alison ever delivered took herself off works for the a baby before to bed without NHS but they were eating, feeling ‘a brilliant. Only bit off’, only to one of the paramedics had wake in the early hours with some experience – but that contractions ‘coming thick was only the basics. and fast’, she said. ‘They were all amazing ‘I told Grant to ring an looking after me but they ambulance quick. My last were like deer in headlights. two labours were fast, over ‘I was on gas and air and in three hours from start to turned to ask them to rub finish, so I knew this would my back when I felt I needed be the same. to push. Three pushes and It took paramedics about she was out. Everyone was 35 minutes to reach them gobsmacked. It all happened down a single-track road in wild weather – chucking rain so fast,’ said Alison. Medics were worried about and a howling wind. With Abigail’s breathing and no midwife on the island, instructions from Oban came plans were made for two over the phone to get Alison helicopters – one each for into the ambulance and off to Alison and Abigail – to get them off the island. Craignure Hospital where a A special neo-natal waiting helicopter would take
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| WINTER 2021/22
Mull & Iona Life issue 44.indd 22
19/01/2022 17:49:06
