Helen, mum to Bonnie, says,
“Bonnie was born perfect. I had the most perfect peaceful home birth.
After 11 days I decided it was time I got out and visited family about an hour’s drive away. The day went fine. However on the way home Bonnie started crying and would not settle, which wasn’t like her.
This continued through to the following day and the GP advised us to go to A&E. By this point, Bonnie was exhausted and no longer crying, but still wasn’t feeding and I was dismissed as being an ‘over worrying’ mother and sent home.
The following day Bonnie was on fire, her temperature was so high. I rushed her back to A&E where a nurse took one look at her and she was rushed through to ‘resus’. Doctors appeared from everywhere and they pumped her full of antibiotics. I knew at this point it was serious and thought ‘that’s it, we’ve lost our perfect baby’.
Paediatrics sat me down and told me they thought she had meningitis and they need to find the cause. They did a lumbar puncture to confirm. I was advised not to be there and sat in the room numb.
Her CRP (C-reative protein) test came back over 400! It was confirmed Bonnie had group B Strep meningitis. At the time, I was convinced I’d given it to her, though I’ve since found that although half of late-onset GBS infections in babies are caused by the GBS bacteria that the mother carries, the other half aren’t. A week in hospital and three weeks of antibiotics and Bonnie came back fighting. So far she has not had any damage from this and the doctors say she’s a miracle for even being here!”
