Wyllow-Raine Swinburn was just three days old when she died unexpectedly (Picture: PA)
A three-day-old baby who was found cold and unresponsive by her mum died after a 40-minute wait for an ambulance.
Amelia Pill called 999 after trying to breastfeed her daughter Wyllow-Raine Swinburn and noticing her face was cold and she wasn’t responding.
Ms Pill waited seven minutes for an operator to answer her call, an inquest heard today.
After someone eventually picked up it took another 40 minutes for paramedics to arrive at the home in Didcot, Oxfordshire.
Wyllow was taken John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford but pronounced dead on arrival. A post mortem revealed nothing abnormal and her death was ruled as sudden unexpected death in infancy, which was unexplained.
Ms Pill made the emergency call at around 4.30am on September 30 last year, before calling her brother Luke and the baby’s grandmother, Anna Fisher, who were both in the house at the time.
In a statement read at the inquest at Oxford Coroner’s Court, Mrs Fisher said: ‘At 04.36 I got a call when I was downstairs with the dogs from Amelia saying that Wyllow had stopped breathing.
The inquest into Wyllow’s death was held at Oxford Coroner’s Court (Picture: Google Maps)
‘She was screaming, “no-one is coming, no-one is coming.” I was up and down the stairs as Luke started doing CPR.’
Paramedic Karen Silliborn-Aston told coroner Darren Salter that the first ambulance was at the family home in Blackthorn Road at 5.09am.
The baby’s temperature was taken when she arrived at the hospital and it read 30.8C. A normal temperature for a human is 37C.
Following Wyllow’s death, Oxford University NHS Foundation Trust launched an internal investigation, which found she would have been in a prolonged period of cardiac arrest before the 999 call.
The overall outcome was not likely to be influenced by the time taken to answer the 999 call and the arrival of the ambulance, the investigation concluded.
Ms Silliborn-Aston apologised for any ‘additional distress’ to the family as a result of the delays.
She said that the nearest vehicle for the South Central Ambulance Service had been 24 miles away at the time of the Category 1 call.
An emergency alarm was put out across the region to see if any other responders could make it there first, which they could. However, it still took 40 minutes.
The family’s lawyer asked the coroner to delay the rest of the inquest until more evidence was gathered
He argued that because Wyllow weighed 10 pounds and 5 ounces when born, which is well above average, she was vulnerable to diabetes and that something could have been given to her to save her life.
The inquest was adjourned to a date to be set later.
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It took seven minutes before an operator picked up the 999 call.