‘We are going to do this together’: BBC Ambulance shows moment operator helps woman who didn’t realise she was pregnant

‘We are going to do this together’

‘I think I just gave birth. I didn’t know I was pregnant’, a 20-year-old woman tells the operator.

Thursday’s night’s episode of BBC’s Ambulance shows the nail-biting moment operator Megan helps a frightened woman deliver her baby.

Alone and scared, the woman is given step-by-step guidance over the phone by a calm Megan.

The caller says she doesn’t ‘have a clue’ how many weeks pregnant she is.

When Megan asks if the baby is completely out, the caller replies ‘I’m on my own, I don’t know’.

Megan tells her to take deep breaths and to push hard to get the baby out.

“I can’t”, the woman wimpers.

“You can, we are going to do this together,” she replies.

The woman tells Megan she’s in pain ‘down below’.

“I think the thing has come out”, she says.

But she’s unsure if the baby is breathing.

Megan reassures her, telling her she’s doing really well.

“I’m shivering, I feel cold”, the woman mutters.

An ambulance crew are called to the scene.

Megan hears them bang on the door, and leaves them to it when she knows she is safely in their care.

The baby boy is ‘pink and healthy’, the operators are later told.

Meanwhile paramedics visit patient John at his home.

He’s got pains across his chest, he tells them.

His legs gave way and he fell down earlier on, the 65-year-old says.

He’s taken into the ambulance. Paramedic Amanda is concerned that John may have had a stroke.

The strains on staff in the NHS are thrown into the limelight during the episode.

At Fairfield Hospital, paramedics Rick and Chris have been waiting over an hour to hand over an elderly patient with dementia to medics, the voiceover says.

It’s due to lack of staffing and beds, a paramedic says.

“The National Health Service is under pressure that it’s never experienced before”, an operator says.

“Winter is a prime example. The sheer number of calls coming in, it can really be off the scale.

“If you were in a boat and there was a hole in it and you were trying to bail the water out and if you are frustrated at what you are doing, you are going to sink.

“That’s what it feels like, if the boat doesn’t sink by the end of the shift, you’ve done good”, he says.

Paramedics are called to the scene after a 19-year-old collapses on the floor of a building site.

Ryan is having a fit, the operator is told.

Paramedics are told by his mum that he’s had a few fits over the last few months.

Ryan has to wait an hour and a half to be seen.

It’s so busy today at the control centre that operators are having to tell patients who aren’t seriously ill to make their own way to hospital.

Staff in the control centre are asked to work extra hours following their shifts during the busy day.

At the end of the episode, viewers are given an update on the woman who called in distress while giving birth.

Mum, dad, and baby Ajay are ‘enjoying life as a family’, a caption says.

North West Ambulance Service answered 6,490 calls on the day the episode was filmed, the view is told.

Article source: Manchester Evening News, by Rebecca Day