An Aviemore mother who gave birth by the A9 was forced to wait for 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive because it was sent in the wrong direction by GPS coordinates.
Now Laura and Darren Ross are questioning the system in place at the Scottish Ambulance service that led to the wait.
The ambulance initially went to the A938/B9907 junction not the Blackmount layby where the worried couple and grandmother, Maureen Chisholm, were waiting.
The drama unfolded when Mrs Ross was being driven to hospital and realised she would not be able to wait until they reached Raigmore.
She said: “We were on the road for a few minutes and then I started feeling these urges to push, and I said we really need to pull over.”
They stopped and Mr Ross phoned an ambulance at exactly 3.02am, later praising the call handler’s professionalism.
“She was tremendous, she calmed me down and said right this is what you’ll need to do, the ambulance is on its way – she said that straight away.”
Checking on his wife, Mr Ross could already see the baby’s head and advised the call handler how the ambulance can reach them.
By 3.06am the baby, named Kier, had already been born and according to the “midwife,” Mrs Chisholm, was “in good health, with good colour, red lips.”
Mrs Ross said: “I picked him up straight away and I was just holding him, and just held him as close to me as I could to keep him warm.”
The ambulance eventually arrived around 3.46am and treated her for a further 20 minutes before heading off to Raigmore.
Both Mr Ross and Mrs Chisholm laid the blame at the door of the “system” and consistently commended the call handler and the paramedics.
Mrs Chisholm said: “The fact the call was answered down in the south, well, doesn’t that tell you that they need more lines?”
Mr Ross said: “They shouldn’t have this grey area about where they are going, I could have told the ambulance where we were because they were local.
“Thankfully there were no complications – it could have been catastrophic.”
A Scottish Ambulance Service spokesperson said: “All our call handlers routinely receive and manage calls from all across Scotland.
“They are trained to gather as much information as possible about a patient’s location and dispatch crews via GPS in the most efficient way.”
