From what she told me, the staff monitored her and her baby, put her in a bed for a few hours, and then told her to go home and come back if the pain became stronger or her water broke, because they needed the bed. In my opinion, it is not the fault of the staff that they don’t have enough beds, that is something they can’t help.

Anyway, her water did break later at home, and so her partner called an ambulance. The woman told me that while her partner was on the phone to the ambulance, receiving advice and instructions, the baby was crowning.

She was disappointed that after the birth she had to walk herself to the ambulance down the stairs as they didn’t have a stretcher. But when I asked her what her biggest issue was about the whole ordeal, she said, “well, my other baby was screaming and ... I had to walk up and down the stairs [to ease the pain].”

Today, I noticed the story in another paper. However, either the woman told the other newspaper a different story, or they had an agenda and manipulated her words and took advantage of her emotional vulnerability to fit that agenda.

And it’s an agenda I am so sick of media taking – that of making hospitals look bad.

No one likes going to hospital. Not even to have a baby, because it means there is going to be pain before you get the goods.

Therefore, it’s pretty easy to find people who will be more than happy to have a whinge about how they felt while they were in hospital. Of course their time wasn’t pleasant, being sick is never pleasant.

I have been taught that the fundamental element of journalism is truth. The reporter’s role is to find the truth about an issue, and report it to the people.

So that is why I asked the woman what had upset her the most about the whole fiasco. I could have easily taken the dramatic angle of the hospital sending her home, of beds having to be allocated to patients whose conditions were worse than hers, or of the ambulance not taking a stretcher up the three flights of stairs to get her. I could have put words into her mouth or asked her manipulating questions, and paraphrased her answers to suit an agenda.