‘Premature birth left us stranded in Malta’

A week-long honeymoon turned into a six-week ordeal for two Danish tourists when their son was born a month early leaving them stranded on the island. The couple first had to wait for their newborn to be fit to fly and were then caught in a bureaucratic delay of paperwork that saw them go out of pocket to fund their unplanned ‘holiday’. “We thought this would be a relaxing getaway for a few days, now we’ve been here for ages with no end in sight,” Martin Bjorgaard said. Mr Bjorgaard had thought a week in Malta would be the perfect end to their fairytale wedding but when his heavily pregnant wife Maja started feeling sharp pains a few hours before their flight back to Denmark, he knew something was amiss. “We were walking towards the terminal when I noticed my wife was in pain; she had to sit down. By the time we got to the terminal, the flight was gone and we didn’t know what to do,” Mr Bjorgaard said as he rummaged through a bag for a soft toy to occupy his newborn son. The Bjorgaards made their way back to the information desk and were told that Ms Bjorgaard would need a new fit-for-flight certificate from a local doctor before being allowed to fly. The medical inspection,...