A FORMER beauty queen, model, and television game show hostess has joined the fight to keep maternity facilities at Lymington Hospital.

Maria Rice-Mundy, who has co-presented Bob's Your Uncle with the late Bob Monkhouse and Sale of the Century and who has acted in pantomimes for the past ten years, gave birth to both her children at Lymington Birth Centre in King's Road.

Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs maternity services in the New Forest, is thinking about transferring birthing units at Lymington, Hythe and Romsey to a new unit at Ashurst Hospital.

Maria's eldest child Tommy was born at the Lymington Birth Centre almost six years ago and sister Isabel will be celebrating her first birth day in a few days time.

Mandy, a former Miss Bournemouth, said it was a wonderfully relaxed experience, far removed from the hustle and bustle of big city maternity hospitals.

The move to Ashurst is expected to save SUHT £245,000, which she described as "a drop in the ocean".

"It looks like they are picking on something just to save a little bit of money, and it looks like pregnant women are the target,'' she said.

She gave birth to Isabel in Lymington's birthing pool, a facility that was expected to be transferred to the new £36m Lymington New Forest Hospital at Ampress, which is due to open in January.

"It's such a very calming environment for the baby. To lose that would be such a shame," she said.

"I've been blessed with two lovely babies and to have them at Lymington was the icing on the cake, really."

Maria, from New Milton, is also concerned that travelling to Ashurst with regular traffic jams at Lyndhurst was a recipe for disaster.

She plans to attend a SUHT focus group meeting tomorrow.

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