Me And My Newborn Had Strep B  – Guest Post by Clara Sais

Welcome back to the My Mountain series – where guest bloggers share their biggest parenting challenges and how they face them.  Today I’m sharing a post from Clara on a really important topic that we all need educating on.  

Our daughter was born at 11.35pm on Monday, 25th July, after a very long and difficult labour.

She was checked over and seemed to be fine. We were both taken to a room by ourselves to recover. I noticed she did not cry much and was quite quiet, but due to being a new mum and exhausted, I did not notice anything was wrong. However, luckily for us, our midwife, Judith, whom had been looking after me during my pregnancy in the antenatal clinic and was lovely, said to me that she was concerned about my newborn and took her to NICU. It transpired that not only did my daughter have a quite serious Strep B bacterial infection, but so did I. She was put in an incubator and it was painful not to be able to cuddle her, especially during those first few precious days. We were both immediately put on antibiotics and stayed for a week. I remember saying to one of the midwives that I was freezing as I huddled into the sheets and she replied the room was quite warm.

I did not know what Strep B was and did not have any information on it. It was only later that I discovered the condition can be life threatening.

Thankfully, my baby daughter and I recovered and now she is a happy and lively 20 month old. However, I would definitely like to make people more aware of the condition, I dearly wish I had known a lot more about it when I was pregnant. So, by writing this post and via my channel, Clara Sais, I hope that I am raising more awareness of Strep B. The NHS currently do not supply a test to pregnant women to detect it. I am just so thankful that my midwife was experienced enough to realise something was wrong, otherwise it could have been a very different story…

For more information regarding Strep B by visiting www.gbss.org.uk.

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