Mum who flew 4,000 miles to give birth on a beach is now ‘stranded’ with her four-month-old baby

A mum from Tameside is now ‘stranded’ off the coast of Grenada with her four-month-old baby after flying 4,000 miles across the world to give birth on a beach. Iuliia Gurzhii and her husband Clive say they ‘feel like prisoners’ as they cannot register their newborn’s birth or apply for a passport, forcing them to stay in the Caribbean country.

The couple left Greater Manchester and were travelling to Rodney Bay, St Lucia, where Iuliia could fulfil her dream of having a ‘natural’ birth on the beach there. But the 38-year-old’s waters broke at sea, and baby Louisa was born on April 23, 2023.

Since then they’ve faced a battle against bureaucracy to get her home. The family had to leave their eight-year-old daughter Elizabeth at home in the UK, as they couldn’t get her passport renewed, to make matters worse.

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They were initially told by a hospital they couldn't register her birth because she was more than 24 hours old. An immigration office then said they needed proof the baby was theirs, before a passport office said they couldn't help because the couple had no proof of where Louisa was born.

The pair now claim the UK High Commission said they needed a DNA test - which they are still waiting to get the results for. Feeling "stranded and abandoned" and running out of money, the pair say they don't know how they will get back to the UK.

Clive, 51, a sports coach, from Tameside, Manchester, said: "We have been passed around different agencies and nobody will help us.We are running out of money. We will soon run out of food, and nobody is helping us.

"We are essentially stateless - we are more than abandoned. We are prisoners