Twins: Mum Bianca with her newborns

WITHYBUSH baby unit has been closed for less than a week, despite a long campaign to save the essential service that the Welsh Government deemed unnecessary for Pembrokeshire. 

Already Carmarthen’s Glangwili Hospital has proved it is unable to cope with its new responsibilities as a Pembrokeshire baby is diverted from there to Swansea’s hospital, adding significant and potentially life threatening time on to the wait for specialist care. The baby unit, which closed on August 4, has been a stalwart of essential services for our county since the late seventies. There are many stories of lives it has saved over the years, history that has now come to an end.

The Herald has learnt that already the new history being written by the diversion of this service to Glangwili has begun with a story that could have ended in tragedy. Speaking about an alarming incident this week was parent Martin McGeown: “We went to Withybush on Friday, August 1 for a scan. We were told that one of the twins, the boy, had a problem as his blood flow from the placenta was reduced. We then saw a doctor in Withybush who said we had to go to another hospital to be monitored which should have been Carmarthen, which wasn’t ready.

The closest hospital with a bed was Singleton Hospital in Swansea, but they had no cots, so the nearest hospital then was in Bridgend. I asked if Withybush would take us by ambulance but we were told no, we would have to take her by car. “Whilst it was not an emergency, because she wasn’t actually in labour, they wouldn’t take her by ambulance. We got to Bridgend two and a half hours later. On the maternity ward she had to be monitored 2-3 times a day. I begged the midwives in Bridgend to please transfer my wife Bianca to Swansea.

“They were excellent in Bridgend and they could all see how upset we were, so the midwife begged Singleton on behalf of me to take us in. She got us a bed because someone had left, and purely by chance as the hospital was full. I had to sign my wife out of hospital in order to get to Swansea which was at 12 o’clock at night. She had a C-section on Tuesday, August 5.” He went on to describe how he felt about what had happened and the implication this had for future births in Pembrokeshire: “A Pembrokeshire family is now distraught over what happened to them.

How are people supposed to get to Carmarthen? We were even told that if Bridgend was closed to us, and a bed wasn’t available, we would have to go to Birmingham hospital! It is unbelievable. My son will be in intensive care for another two weeks”. Bianca McGeown added to her husband’s concerns, stating: “The problem was that the twins could have been split up as a result of all this travelling to and from different hospitals. It was a real shock as we expected Carmarthen to be up and running.

Who wants to be driving up and down the motorway panicking, about where they are delivering a baby that will need help. What if someone didn’t have a car – how would they get there? Especially with no ambulance provision, even though I needed a C-section as it turned out”. She finished by commenting on the baby unit’s closure in Withybush: “It’s a shambles and it’s also really sad. In Pembrokeshire we are cut off: what about in the winter in bad weather and getting to Carmarthenshire safely? For people who are in labour, and not straight forward labour, I dread to think what could happen.”