Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Ct told me ery ill... it d deadly little Jack
my arms and took l procedure to see
too young for pain drip-fed her sugar a doctor drew fluid o test for infection. ernity ward, despermy husband while ms coo over their longest hour of my life. Lola was admitted to the special care baby unit, where doctors pumped her tiny veins with antibiotics and antiviral drugs to fight the infection, while they desperately tried to pinpoint what it was.
Some of the drugs were so strong I had to sign consent forms and was warned that they may leave her with permanent hearing problems. But I didn’t care – I wanted them to do whatever it took to save my baby’s life.
Test after test came back negative – the doctors couldn’t find out what was making Lola so sick. So they just continued with the drugs, as I spent every waking hour at her bedside. As the veins in her tiny hands gave up, they started using the veins in her feet.
When they had used all those, they then wanted to use the veins in her head.
I refused, and sat for hours holding the tiny cannula into her foot to deliver the last scraps of antibiotic. When they wanted to put another needle into her stomach to take a urine sample, I held her over a tiny potty for hours until she passed water.
I didn’t want my baby to have any more needles put into her unless it was really necessary. Our priest came to the hospital to bless Lola. He offered to christen her there and then in case she didn’t make it but we declined, refusing to believe that our baby would die.
All we could do was hope and pray that she would pull through and by some miracle she did. After a week in special care, her temperature returned to normal and she was well enough to go home.
It was only a few weeks later, when we went to the GP for a check-up, that we were told she had suffered neonatal sepsis, an infection in the blood stream that is only seen in one in a thousand babies. We have no idea how she caught it – it could have been from an infection contracted during labour or a common cold a visitor had passed to her. But it could have cost her her life. A month later, my elder daughter was admitted to hospital with an asthma attack. The same junior doctor who had listened to my fears approached me and said her experience with Lola had taught her a lesson she couldn’t have learned in medical school – that a mother’s instinct is usually right. I don’t blame the doctor who told me Lola had colic. As we have seen on Coronation Street, sepsis is notoriously difficult to diagnose, and very rare. I am thankful that the junior doctor exercised caution and believed a worried mum enough to seek her superior’s advice.
And I am grateful to the countless NHS doctors and nurses who worked so tirelessly to save Lola’s life.
Lola is now a happy and healthy 11-year-old. Small for her age, but perfect in every way. She is a daredevil with an infectious lust for life, voted by her classmates as the most adventurous girl in her year. It is almost as if she instinctively knows that she is lucky to be here – so is going to live life to the full.