An expectant mum in Sark was packing one evening in preparation for moving to Guernsey to give birth when she felt twinges which indicated that things were moving much faster than she had thought.
On Thursday 25 June Kyla Magell still had two weeks to go before her due date, but the Guernsey health authorities encourage Sark and Alderney mums to relocate to Guernsey in good time to try to ensure a trouble-free labour.
It soon became clear that would be out of the question, and she called the emergency services at 9.25pm.
‘My thought process was that I’m going to make it to Guernsey,’ she said. ‘On the phone call I was trying to rush them, and I thought that maybe I should have phoned a little bit earlier.’
Sark volunteers rallied around while the marine ambulance Flying Christine set off for the island.
Dr Bruce Jenkins and three volunteers, alerted to an imminent labour, quickly arrived at the Magells’ home.
Dad Jake was just putting the couple’s daughter Sadie to sleep. He returned to find his wife lying on the floor with towels around.
‘I wasn’t there when she was on the phone,’ he said. ‘People started arriving, and I thought – this is not happening at the house.’
Volunteers helped Mrs Magell walk an estimated 50 metres from their house to Sark’s tractor-drawn ambulance.
‘It could be quite a bumpy road, but they drove carefully over certain areas to make sure I didn’t shake the baby out,’ she recalled.
Volunteers helped her as she edged down the harbour steps to the marine ambulance, which had arrived at Maseline Harbour at 10.40pm. She even had a contraction halfway down the steps, and it was clear that the baby’s arrival was nigh.
On a hot night, after the hottest day ever recorded in the islands, the sea was flat calm, although thunder was rumbling to the north.
Flying Christine coxswain Andy Lowe chose to sail south of the reefs around Jethou in darkness to avoid the dangers of rocks closer to the island’s cliffs.
‘Andy made sure not only that we got there quickly, but that it was really smooth, as we didn’t want to go over bumps,’ said paramedic Jim Cathcart, who was on board. He said that inside the Christine, with doors shut for safety, it was dark, hot and noisy from the boat’s engine.
‘Plan A would have been for the baby to be born in the hospital. Plan B was that we were going to deliver the baby on board,’ he said.
The Flying Christine left Sark with eight passengers, and would make it to Guernsey with nine.
Harriet was born just south of Jethou in a stretch of water known as the Muse Passage, nine minutes before the boat reached Guernsey. Her birth certificate states her place of birth as the territorial waters of the Bailiwick of Guernsey.
Dr Jenkins took the baby, who weighed in at nine pounds, while Mr Cathcart made sure she was dried, wrapped, and passed on to Mrs Magell.
‘At that point I did have gas and air and so I was a lot happier, and a little more chatty with everyone else,’ she said.
She said that she did not remember too much of the journey, but on reflection the experience had been a fantastic one.
On reaching St Peter Port they were taken by ambulance to Loveridge Ward at the hospital, where Mr Magell said the maternity ward was ‘like Bethlehem’. ‘We had the last bed.’
The Magells returned to live in Sark less than a year ago, having left the island for a few years, first to live in Guernsey and then in Cyprus.
‘When babies decide to come, they come,’ says Sark doctor
Sark's resident doctor Bruce Jenkins reflected that he had not delivered a baby for 22 years when he received news that an expectant mother was in ‘imminent labour’ on the island.
It was an unexpected call, post-9pm, but he set off for the Magell family home in sandals.
His belief was, ‘focus on safe delivery and enjoy the moment, which British GPs don’t often get the chance to do’.
Dr Jenkins trained in South Africa at Stellenbosch University and University of the Free State before moving to the UK, and then Sark. Over his career he had regularly been involved in obstetrics, but not for a while.
‘I’m pleased I’ve got a few hundred [baby deliveries] in my life,’ he said.
‘That was a reassurance doing it. To use a cliche, it’s like riding a bicycle.’
He said he greatly enjoyed the journey to Guernsey on a beautiful evening with smooth and calm waters.
‘It was joyful to share it with the family like that.’
He also praised the three Sark volunteers who had helped Mrs Magell.
‘I just do my job. They are incredible to work with and to have as part of a team, and this is a team.’
Dr Jenkins said he understood the advice that expectant mothers from the island should move to Guernsey well ahead of the due date, but said that was no guarantee against such surprises occurring.
‘You’ve just got to deal with it. When babies decide to come, they come, and when they decide to come, you need to know what you’re doing.’
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