And nine months later...
THE long, cold winter was yesterday being blamed for a baby boom this autumn.
Health chiefs in Portsmouth, Hampshire, are now planning for a boom in births in the next few weeks after more than 600 12-week scans were performed in March – up 100 on the monthly average.
A spokeswoman for Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust said they could not speculate about what had caused the increase in pregnancies.
But independent midwife Joy Horner, of Birth Joy, said bad winters often led to baby booms.