LITTLE Lily Rose Mavin will always have cause to remember Norham.

For the new arrival was born at the side of the road in the Northumberland village, in the back of an ambulance.

Lily announced her arrival in the vehicle which was rushing mum Yvonne, from Berwick, to hospital after she went into labour.

The full-time mother, from Sunnyside Mews, was shocked to find out she was pregnant last August.

The 31-year-old learned she was pregnant in the same month as Berwick Maternity Unit temporarily stopped performing deliveries following a fall in the number of births and safety incidents.

However, she was told she could not have given birth there had that not been the case as she was classed as high risk, due to her body mass index and because Lily Rose is her fifth child.

Yvonne arranged to give birth at the maternity unit at Borders General Hospital in the Scottish Borders.

She was due on February 28 but eight days early, started to feel pains while at home.

She called husband John, a 46 year old kitchen assistant at a Berwick nursing home and told him their baby was on its way.

After he had rushed home from work, the couple set out in a waiting ambulance to the Borders hospital at 4.50pm.

But 10 minutes into the journey, when the vehicle had only got as far as Norham, nine and a half miles from home, Yvonne’s waters broke.

The ambulance screeched to a halt and John, who has been present at the births of all but one of the couple’s children, assisted the travelling paramedic in delivering Lily Rose, who was born quickly at 5.10pm.

The happy family continued the journey to the hospital, where the new arrival weighed in at 8lb 5.5oz, before being allowed home the following day.

Yvonne last night said the trauma of giving birth in the ambulance had been eased by the presence of a familiar face - the paramedic who had helped with two of her previous births.

She has since been inundated with congratulatory messages on social networking website Facebook.

Of the new arrival, proud Yvonne added: “She is doing fine.”

Yvonne is not the first woman from the area to have given birth in an ambulance in recent months.

Louise McCulloch, from Berwick, was booked in to deliver at the town’s maternity unit, before deliveries were suspended.

She gave birth to Marty in an ambulance, en route to Wansbeck General Hospital, at Alnwick Infirmary car park on Halloween.

Jayne Potts, from Belford, gave birth to Hollie in a vehicle en route to the Borders hospital in November.