FROM CRADLE TO THE GRAVE THE NHS WAS LAUNCHED WITH THE PROMISE OF

EHERE in the place where my life started, death seems impossible. On the walls of Aberdeen's Forresterhill Hospital maternity ward, posters offer advice on breastfeeding. Mothers with bumps lie in beds or sit in wheelchairs, waiting to push babies into the world. Crying in various pitches, belted out by tiny lungs, attests to the fact that some have already been successful. Elsewhere fathers sit twitchy and unshaven. This is where, 32 years ago, I was cut from the womb, a month before my due date, and placed in an incubator with a so-so chance of survival. My brother before me had been stillborn in one of these wards, missing his chance at life, and someone decided to extract me early. A few wards away, last March, I watched my grandmother die - one faint breath, then another, then no more.

Forresterhill is one of the largest hospital complexes in Europe. Its catchment area comprises Grampian, the north of Scotland, and the Shetland Islands. I have always felt queasy walking about here and have avoided, where possible, the gaze of people suffering itches, stitches, rashes, fractures and seizures. I used to come with my father when he gave blood: as it began to loop round the tubes, I would follow the liquid with my eyes momentarily and then fall over. Later, working as a domestic in Woodend Hospital, I found myself delivering tea to the elderly, the mumbling and the infirm.

Many things can happen in the course of life but it is the bookends - birth and death - that most define our relationship with hospitals.

On entering the corridors of the high-risk antenatal unit, the temperature feels oppressive. It is geared towards the needs of expectant mothers with high blood pressure, those who have undergone organ transplants and those expecting babies with abnormalities. Mothers with gestational diabetes sit out all or part of their late pregnancies here. Jwala Krishnan spent the last trimester of her pregnancy injecting herself with insulin. "The fact that I'm terrified of needles didn't help, " she says.

"After I was diagnosed, I stayed in here for six or seven days, learning how to manage my condition and trying to bond with the needles. I started worrying whether my baby was going to be all right, whether my having diabetes would affect his future. I was in a constant state of fear until I saw him."

The boy is six days old, has no name yet, and is fine, bar temporary low blood sugar levels due to withdrawal from his mother's insulin. He kicks his legs, squeaks, and his tiny hand slaps the Tigger motif on his baby suit. A small white plastic band on his arm shows his date of birth.

Krishnan is from Kerala in the south of India, and her husband, Kumaran, from neighbouring Madras. Kumaran tells me he is still incredulous and that nobody could have prepared him for this feeling. He can't describe it but to an outsider it looks like euphoria underwritten by self assurance. Like many new fathers, he has been gripped by the photography bug and is taking endless shots of his boy. Krishnan's mother, Radha, who has flown over from India for the birth of her first grandchild, has been rendered virtually speechless with emotion. "He's changing every second, " she says. "Right in front of us . . ."

The couple met at Aberdeen's Robert Gordon University nine years ago and thereafter settled in the city. She is a forensics analyst with the police; he commutes daily to London, where he works as a scientific advisor to a pharmaceutical company. They would have moved south to be closer to Kumaran's work but, after undergoing major surgery in Aberdeen two years ago, Krishnan wanted to have her baby here. "I trusted the hospital staff after that experience and knew that everything was going to work out fine, " she says. Given that no prospective parent can remember life before the NHS in Scotland, Krishnan's views as an incomer to the UK are reassuring.

"In India, you have phenomenally expensive private healthcare, with the same level of technology as here, but the experience is completely different. The staff here are so motivated and passionate. Everybody from the cleaners who come in the morning to the girl who takes round the water. You would think it would be difficult to maintain a personal contact with absolutely every patient, but they do it with such great ease."

The couple's favourite staff member seems to be Sister Lesley Mowat, who has been assisting births in Aberdeen for nearly 40 years and may, she thinks, have looked after me as a baby. Naturally, she has lost count of the number of individuals she has brought into the world, but her enthusiasm for the task is undiminished. "It's a miracle when you think about it, " she says. "You palpate somebody's tummy and then later in the day they go for a caesarean section and a baby comes out. Was I really feeling that baby inside somebody's body? How did all of that manage to stay in there?"

Mowat has no children of her own, but still gets letters from the children and mothers she has brought together over the years. Her real love, she says, is her special care patients, such as Krishnan. "I see them all the way through their pregnancy because I go to them as a midwife advisor and, if they have to come into hospital, they come here, to my ward. And then they come back again after delivery. I've known some of the girls for many, many years, and it's so satisfying to see them with their babies."