LITTLE Toby Westbury Sterry will never be allowed to forget his surprise arrival into the world.

For the bouncing baby boy is named after the layby where he was born a month early.

Mum Kate Flello, 32, and her partner Brian Sterry, 35, were racing to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital when they realised Toby wasn't going to wait until he got there.

Brian pulled into the Texaco garage at Elton Corner to dial 999 for an ambulance to meet them at the layby near Sterry's coal merchants in Westbury-on-Severn.

By the time they got to the layby at the side of the busy A48, Toby could not wait any longer.

Brian was forced to turn midwife and deliver his son at the roadside just as a sole ambulance woman arrived.

"I did want a home birth but not a car birth," said mum Kate.

"It was so painful that I was chewing the seats and there are still teeth marks on the handle inside the car.

"To be honest I was so traumatised that I cannot remember a lot about it. It's all a bit of a blur. But I do remember a double-decker Stagecoach bus going past and thinking 'I hope they cannot see anything'."

Kate, who has a son Aaron, 20 months, had been back and forth to hospital with pains when she finally went into labour.

At first she thought it was a false alarm because Toby was not due for another month.

The Cinderford mum had skipped the chapter in the book about car births because she was hoping to have her baby at home.

But Toby arrived within 30 minutes of her setting off from Cinderford to hospital to have her pains checked out.

Luckily the ambulance woman arrived in the nick of time to get the cord which was wrapped around Toby's neck and a passing male A&E nurse stopped his car in the layby to help.

Both mum and baby were rushed to hospital after the birth on April 8 but a month later Toby, 5lb 6oz, is a healthy bouncing baby.

Friends have since said they passed their car in the layby and wondered why they had stopped, without having any clue of the unfolding drama.

Toby's parents took him to the layby on May 10, the day he was due to be born.

They want to thank all the people who helped them during the birth and want to trace the nurse who stopped on the A48.

"We wanted to call him something app- ropriate and Toby Westbury is better than Toby Astra," said his mum.