”A deadly kiss nearly killed my baby boy”
Charlotte Jones, 25, from abergavenny, Wales, thought her poorly son just needed a good night’s sleep, but a virus was threatening his life
my ex, Julian, came round to look after our little boy and I rushed out of the door. I loved my course in mental health at Worcester University, but it was hard work with a toddler. The studying was intense and Ellis, 19 months, had me up very early in the mornings.
Although Julian, 25, and I split up soon after Ellis was born, we were still friendly and were happily co-parenting our son. Julian worked as a Domino’s delivery driver so we could fit his shifts around my studies. We were settling into a routine where we shared equal care of Ellis.
That morning in October 2019 the day started as usual, but six hours later Julian phoned. “Ellis won’t stop crying,” he said, starting to panic. “I think there’s something wrong with him.”
One moment Ellis had been laughing and throwing food around, the next he was refusing to eat or drink, and was screaming as though he was in pain. I know it’s natural for toddlers to feel under the weather occasionally, but Ellis had rarely turned down food before.
I rushed home and, looking at Ellis closely, I noticed some little bumps on his tongue.
“Maybe he’s bitten it,” I thought, but surely that wouldn’t stop him from eating. “It might be a bug,” Julian said. Ellis had been at his nursery the week before, but none of the other mums had said anything about their little ones being unwell. I thought it best to put him down for a nap, all cosy in his own bed.
“Nothing a little bit of sleep can’t fix,” I thought.
Ellis’s bedtime routine was a warm bath to get him off to sleep, so at 7pm I took him up to the bathroom. It always did the trick, but this time, he took a turn for the worse. He was covered in a rash from head to toe and his crying was so piercing it was painful to hear. I felt like a bad mother, not knowing how to make my son feel better.
“We need to get him checked out,” I said to Julian. So we jumped into the car, strapped Ellis in the back and made our way to the out-of-hours clinic in Newport.
rushed to hospital
By the time we got there, Ellis seemed to be in a trance and the doctors were worried, but they weren’t sure what was wrong with him and said he would need to go to a different centre with more resources. We sped to the district hospital in Abergavenny, but the medics there still weren’t sure what was wrong, so for the next ten hours, they kept Ellis under observation and took blood tests. A student doctor suggested it might be herpes, but was overruled by a doctor who didn’t think that was the cause.
Ellis remained in hospital and was allowed to play with the other children in the ward, but he still wasn’t eating and we struggled to get him to drink. So after three days he was separated from the other patients in case he was contagious and the medics stuck lines into his arms to pump in fluids.
He was so dehydrated and in desperate need of vitamins. The doctors warned that if he didn’t get fluids into him, his condition could be deadly. As soon as they said that, everything became a blur.
I could see Ellis’s tongue getting worse, and his lips now had bumps, too. He was suffering so much, wanting to sleep but in too much pain to get any rest.
“What’s happening to him?” I asked a nurse on the ward.
“We think it actually is herpes,” she
‘Blood was all over Ellis’s face and soaking the sheets’
said. ”You brought him in just in time.”
It was the first time I’d heard of herpes being associated with infants and I was stunned. I thought it was a sexually transmitted infection, not something a child could get. I also vaguely knew it was something to do with cold sores and could be shared from kissing on the lips.
It’s hard to diagnose herpes in children as it looks just like tonsillitis, so the doctors prioritised giving Ellis fluids. It was heartbreaking to see my little boy so sick.
His lips and tongue were bright red and leaking pus, sealing his mouth shut. Doctors were giving him fluids through a syringe in his mouth, forcing him to drink.
I learned herpes was mainly harmless in adults, but in babies and toddlers the symptoms and effects are a lot more powerful. Herpes in babies can easily spread to their organs and can kill them if not treated in time. If we’d ignored Ellis’s crying and let him sleep it off, his organs could have failed.
“Herpes could’ve killed him,” I sobbed to Julian while Ellis was getting more fluids pumped into his little body.
Thankfully the doctors were able to stabilise him and control the virus. Ellis kept pulling his drips out and smacking the syringe away, but the nutrients started to kick in and he grew less pale by the end of the first day.
on the mend
That night, Ellis fell asleep and the nurses were able to put an IV drip into his nose. It stayed in for a couple of hours before he yanked it out, but every little bit of nourishment helped bring him back to health.
I held Ellis’s hand in bed in his hospital room. He still wasn’t himself. He was grizzly and there was no sign of his usual bubbly personality – but the doctors assured us he’d be on the mend soon.
“You did the right thing bringing him here,” the doctor said. I started to cry. With all the worrying about Ellis I’d barely had any sleep.
Luckily, Julian got some time off work and I phoned the university to let them know I wouldn’t be able to make it to my lectures.
After four days of helplessly watching
Ellis in pain, things started to look up. He was drinking fluids from an oral syringe and wasn’t crying as much as before. We were told the herpes was under control and Ellis could go home.
He still looked awful, with white pus all around his lips and massive sores in and around his mouth, but he was still here and that’s all that mattered.
The doctors couldn’t say for certain how Ellis had contracted herpes, but said it was probably because someone had kissed him on his lips with an open cold sore.
Ellis didn’t want to sleep alone on the first night home. He flinched whenever I left his side, so we snuggled up together. When we woke up the next morning, I was greeted by a scene from a horror movie. There was blood was all over his face and soaking the sheets. His face was so tender that the soft pillow had rubbed open the healing sores.
Thankfully, it looked worse than it was, but sleeping together and washing the bed linen every day became our new routine for the next week.
Ellis also needed to take medication and would wriggle and scream when we tried to treat his sores with the mouthwash he’d been prescribed. But after a week, the old Ellis started to come back. He began eating solid food again, a small miracle for our little boy. His wounds started to heal, too.
I was constantly anxious that he would get ill again – especially as
I didn’t have any answers about how he got herpes in the first place. It could have happened at any time.
Ellis is still terrified at night and won’t sleep on his own, but my boy is home and I couldn’t ask for anything more. Our lives could have changed forever if we’d ignored his crying for just a few more hours. He’s lucky to have survived a killer kiss. I was shaken at how close I’d come to losing my baby forever from something that sounds so small.