Heidi’s mum writes,
“Thank you for raising awareness of group B Strep septicaemia. It was 2 years ago tomorrow (3rd March 2018) in the middle of a long period of snow in Ireland, that I discovered that my 8 week old daughter Heidi had a temperature. She hadn’t fed great that night (unfortunately that wasn’t unusual!) but my husband took her downstairs that morning about 7am so I could get some rest. I woke at 10, and realising the time, rushed downstairs to get her, thinking she’d need a feed. I took her upstairs, she latched on but sucked a few times and then stopped feeding. I noticed she was warm, so took her temperature – it was 38.6. That was all I needed to see. I set in motion trying to get out of our estate as we were snowed in. In the interim, her colour was pale, starting to mottle and she was groaning a lot. She was also a little floppy. We eventually got out of the estate in the car and met the ambulance half-way up the road. We made it to hospital where she had a battery of tests.
I never even thought of GBS – I knew before getting pregnant with my first daughter that I colonised it, but had had no problems with my 1st natural delivery (I had antibiotics) and my 2nd daughter had been an elective c-section. It was only after we had been admitted that it occurred that it could have been this, so I immediately informed the medical team. At this point, they still didn’t have her blood cultures back, but she had been started in treatment that luckily was sufficient to cover the GBS septicaemia.
Thankfully she came through it with no deficiencies and is a happy, healthy, crazy 2 year old. She was diagnosed with late-onset GBS septicaemia. Just thought I’d share my story with you as your page popped up and it triggered my memory….”
