My horror labour on M2

Emma Retallick had to endure a terrifying 100-mile journey while she was in the agonies of labour because there were no intensive care cots available at her local hospital.

Mrs Retallick, 24, was admitted to the Kent and Canterbury hospital near her home in Bekesbourne after her waters broke nine weeks prematurely.

Already frightened for the life of their unborn baby, Mrs Retallick and her husband James were then told the hospital's six-cot neonatal intensive care unit was full.

"The doctor said they would start ringing round other hospitals to find a cot but then I started going into labour," she said. "It was terrifying. We should have been really excited about having a baby and instead I was stressed and crying, begging them to find a cot or stop the labour."

After two hours of frantic searching, a cot was found at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, but ambulance paramedics were reluctant to transport Mrs Retallick because she was already in labour and they felt it was too risky.

"It was incredible," she said. "I was lying in pain and the doctors, nurses, paramedics and my family were all arguing about what was happening.

"The paramedics finally agreed to take me but 45 minutes into the journey a tyre blew, so we spent 30 minutes on the hard shoulder of the M2 while another ambulance was brought up and I was transferred into that. I had already had one premature baby.

"All I could think of was that I was going to give birth on the hard shoulder and my baby would die."

After a two-hour journey, Mrs Retallick arrived at the hospital at midnight and gave birth the next day to her daughter Chloe, now 18 months old and healthy.

She said: "Going into premature labour is upsetting and scary as it is, without having to endure things like that."