I've been sick and have been deleting a lot of e-mails but I noticed a post
today about GBS and I suspect perhaps the thread is regarding testing mum
and/or a new-born for GBS?  As a mother of a baby who had to be airlifted
out of town, on a ventilator of 70% oxygen and told my baby might not make
it through the night, GET TESTED!  I wasn't going to have any routine
testing done during my pregnancy because I wanted to keep it as natural as
possible.  When my OB found out the hospital would automatically give me an
IV (something I wanted to avoid) during labour if they didn't know my GBS
status, we decided to have that test done thinking that we could report a
negative result to the hospital and avoid the IV.  [I was 38 weeks pregnant
at the time of the swab].  I gave birth the following week and did have one
round of antibiotics in my IV but it wasn't enough to protect my baby who
had already contracted the infection.  He wasn't breathing, and he had
pneumonia.  We spent 10 days in an out of town NICU, five of those days he
was on a ventilator so I had to pump before I ever got to breast feed.  I
can't help but wonder if I'd had the GBS swab done earlier (I think around
30 - 32 weeks is when it's normally done?) and taken antibiotics during the
pregnancy, perhaps my son would've been ok when he was born.  I am very
lucky that my son didn't contract meningitis or something more serious.
He's perfectly healthy now but it sure was a scary start to our lives and
stressful for me to have to drive 3 hours out of town and stay in a hotel 8
hours after giving birth.

Margo
Wife to Robert
Mummy to Liam

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