My story

[bauer]

I had to have a second scan at the hospital beacuse my waters were low. On the monday i had my second 20 week scan and they said my waters were fine. On the wed i thought i was losing water so on the thursday i went back to the hospital and they told me i had a urine infection and gave me some antibiotics and sent me home. On the sunday i started bleeding lightly so went back to the hospital. This is when they told me i had strep b and just told me that when when i am in labour i would be given a course of antibiotics to stop the infection getting to the baby. On the monday i started to bleed quite heavily so went to my local hospital . They refused to see me in the maternity unit saying their was no one who could help ( even though there were clearly health proffessionals there as people were waiting to be seen) and suggested i go up to see the midwifes in another part of the hospital. I used the buzzer and told the lady on the other end what was happening and she just spoke over the intercom that they could'nt help and i had to go to A and E. I then had to wait about an hour in A and E while i was still heavily bleeding. When i was finally seen, they wanted to check the babies heart beat, but after waiting for another half hour they said they could not find a monitor to check. They then transferred me to a city hospital where they found my baby's heart beat but had said that all my waters had gone and i was fully dilated. They told me there was nothing they could do and that i would have to give birth to my baby but would be born dead. I was absolutly devastated. They told me my labour would be quick as the baby would be small. I was in labour for 13 hours.At 22 weeks and 4 days, on the 4th december 2012 I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl who weighed just under a pound. She was born alive and lived for 10 mins . They left the placenta inside me for over 2 and a half hours before they took me to surgery to remove it. Finally i could hold my baby without being in pain. Me and my partner then spent the day with our beautiful daughter before we had to say goodbye. It was the most devastating time for us. I feel angry and confused with how the hospitals treated us. I have so many un answered questions. The postmortam of the placenta said that the infection had got to the baby because my waters had gone. Why didnt they check my waters again? why didnt they tell us about how strep b could affect the pregnancy rather than just the labour? This was my first pregnancyand i just had no idea what was going on.

[GBSSadmin Partner Volunteer Group B Strep Support]

I am so very sorry to read what happened and so sad that your precious daughter died. Please accept my sincere condolences.

You obviously have a lot of questions and understandably so. Please write them all down and make an appointment to talk to your health professionals. They will be keen to provide you with as many answers as they can although, of course, sometimes they simply don't have answers to our questions. They will also be able to work out with you a plan for the future.

I'm sure you'll get lots of support on this forum and, again, I'm so sorry.

[Killick1508]

I too went through something very similar and I am so sorry you had to go through this. I lost my 3rd and 4th child to GBS and finally called it a day as i couldn't go through the heartache any more.

I like you had early bleeding and was told i had a water infection, but when they amnio swabbed me realised that i was actually in labour at 26 weeks, i went through an agonising 26 hours before finally my beautiful daughter Shelby was born, she lived for an hour and died in my arms. This was the first time that i had ever heard of GBS.

The longing for another baby after she died overwhelmed me and i fell pregnant 3 months later, the hospital was amazing but i was very nervous. At 20 weeks i noticed a heavy mucus and rang the hospital, they asked me to come in and i had an examination and they agreed that it was muscy but this is normal and i was sent home. 2 hours later my waters broke and that was the start of the most awful time of my life - this was Sunday night. On Tuesday i gave birth to the cord and that point was told my son would have died, i begged for them to give me a c section as i couldn't go through with it again, but they said it was too dangerous - i finally gave birth to Jack on Thursday 20th April 2000.

Yes it has been 14/13 years but i will never ever forget them and the horrors will always be with me.

No-one around me understood.

I am so sorry that you lost your beautiful daughter too but she is now a bright star waiting to meet her mum and dad one day xxx