While Haliburton Highlands Health Services is not equipped with childbirth centres that didn’t stop the medical team at the Minden facility from delivering a baby last month.

When Carnarvon resident Christine Mansi started having cramps on the afternoon of Feb. 4 she didn’t think it was time for her to give birth since her due date was still many weeks away.

However daughter Bailey Kristalyn had different plans and she was born at the Minden hospital that afternoon.

Not only was Bailey premature – weighing in at just four pounds 11 ounces – but the birth was a breach her head coming out last.

“The baby when she came out was blue” said grandmother Brenda Butterfield of Minden.

Staff got the infant on oxygen and shortly thereafter she and her mother were transported to Ross Memorial Hospital in Lindsay.

“They don’t deliver babies here” Butterfield said. “Everybody thinks it’s just a Band-Aid hospital. And doing the breach . . . that’s a tough job. They did their job the best they could ever do.”

On March 19 the family returned to the Minden hospital with gifts and thanks for the emergency staff that brought Bailey into the world – nurses Kym Gordon and Sonya Samson and Dr. Leon Lerm.

“It was fairly quick” said Lerm of the delivery. “We had to make due with what we had.”

Bailey is doing well up to seven pounds eight ounces as of the weekend.