Now the resistance to women travelling up the A90 to give birth has been countered by a willingness to travel down the dual carriageway to give birth in Perth.

A pregnant woman from Dundee wants to take advantage of a new birthing pool being installed in Perth, a facility not available presently at Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital.

In future years NHS Tayside is planning to install birthing pools, which can help ease the pain of labour, at Ninewells and at Montrose, but meantime Perth is the only such facility in the region.

The birthing pool has been delivered to the community midwife unit at PRI and installation is expected to be complete by the end of August.

“Work done at national level suggests a birthing pool provides pain relief that is very effective,” said Kay Fowlie, clinical group manager for women and child health, based at Ninewells.

“Therefore it really would be expected that any new development of a CMU (community midwife unit) would include a birthing pool.”

Elsewhere, women have the opportunity to give birth in the pools rather than simply using them for pain relief prior to birth. Initially women will not be offered that opportunity in Tayside.

“Once we have under-taken training for the midwives there will be an opportunity eventually for women in Tayside to have a water birth,” said Ms Fowlie.

NHS Tayside’s acute services division chief executive Gerry Marr, who has responsibility for Ninewells and PRI, said he had visited the unit at PRI earlier this week.

“The midwives are really, really enjoying the work. The ambience of the place you can see is already changing away from a highly medicalised environment.

“We have had slightly less transfers out than was predicted (that is fewer women with medium or high risk births being sent to Ninewells) and more booked in than we perhaps first envisaged.”