Goes into hospital complaining of back pain, comes out with a baby…
A 33-year-old woman from Valpaços managed to skip all the hurdles facing Portugal’s expectant mothers this week by going into a hospital that “does not deliver babies”, and coming out with a baby.
The woman actually went to the A&E department of Mirandela’s Hospital Terra Quente complaining of crippling back pain. She insists that she had no idea she was pregnant.
The doctor/ nurse attending said their first suspicion was “renal colic”. They asked the woman for a urine sample.
“When she emerged from the bathroom, she was bleeding”, nurse Daniela Ribeiro, tells Jornal de Notícias.
It was at this point that nurse Ribeiro and Dr Rainier Ramos Pinto, started putting two-and-two together… rapidly.
“The doctor called INEM to inform them that we had a pregnant woman in labour, and that we did not know the length of the pregnancy – and then we performed the delivery.
“By the time firefighters arrived (for onward ambulance transport) the baby was out; it was crying, and the doctor was removing the placenta”, says nurse Ribeiro, adding that this was the first time she had encountered such a situation.
“I was very worried, because Hospital Terra Quente does not possess this facility. No one is supposed to be born here”, she explained.
Indeed, in keeping with reduced services available to Portuguese women embarking on the business of child-bearing, Mirandela has not possessed a maternity unit since 2006.
Says JN: “In this Transmontana region, this facility is only available at the hospitals of Bragança and Vila Real” – which means had the 33-year-old known she was pregnant, she would almost certainly have given birth in an ambulance like so many women before her have done …
As it is, she skipped all the obstacles: she did not have to call the SNS Pregnancy hotline before venturing out for medical help – and she did not have to listen to instructions that involved a long journey. She just turned up at the nearest hospital to her home, just after 5am in the morning, and had a baby she hadn’t been expecting.
Curiously, the call from Dr Ramos Pinto to explain what was going on in Terra Quente saw the arrival at the little hospital not only of local firefighters, but an INEM ambulance and a VMER emergency resuscitation vehicle (which was not required).
The baby, a boy, and his mother are described as stable. They were both transferred to Vila Real’s neonatal unit, with the baby later being admitted to Porto’s Centro Materno Infantil do Norte where he is receiving “specialised care”.
Source: Jornal de Notícias
