'He was perfect, and then horror happened': the newborn almost died from a dangerous infection

Deborah Twell said her newborn son caught a dangerous form of streptococcus. So he will live with the side effects for the rest of his life. Insider.

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Deborah Twell found out she was pregnant in October 2020, but after three miscarriages, she didn't let herself feel the joy of new life growing inside her until she was confident enough that she was carrying her baby to term. When it was already 20 weeks old, she finally felt a pleasant excitement at the thought of taking her baby in her arms in a few months.

William was born in June. “He was perfect. We stayed in the hospital for five days so I could recover from the bleeding during labor, but William looked completely healthy and there was no concern about sending us home,” the woman said.

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For the first few days at home, William was very irritable and restless and difficult to calm down, Deborah said. She had heard that babies often had colic, and she attributed this anxiety to this. When he was 13 days old, the family began to wonder if his fussiness was more than just colic.

“We just couldn't calm him down. When we took his temperature, we were alarmed to find that the thermometer read almost 39 degrees,” she said.

She called our doctor and he told her to go straight to the emergency room. They were given antibiotics
but still no one fully realized the seriousness of the case, thinking that it was just a fever that could be relieved with medicine.

“While we were waiting in the ward, I heard a nurse instructing the patient next to us to be quiet as there was a seriously ill child next door - William was very ill,” the woman says.

My son caught group B streptococcus

“The next hours were like a blurry movie,” says Deborah. “About 10-15 people surrounded his bed and immediately connected him to oxygen. He was having seizures and they were trying to get his seizures under control and stabilize him.”

Once it was safe, he was taken to the operating room to be put on life support, where the family watched as they performed the six-hour procedure.

“This is the most traumatic memory I will ever have,” the child's mother said.

William was taken to one hospital for a heart check and then to another hospital where he underwent further tests and scans, including an MRI. Doctors said that William had late group B streptococcus, which developed into sepsis and meningitis. An MRI confirmed that William suffered brain damage as a result of the seizures.

When Deborah heard this, she was depressed because the baby could be tested for this infection during her pregnancy.

“If we had known about the infection, he could have been treated. But because the infection is not routinely tested for in the UK, William will live with serious problems for the rest of his life,” she said.

The family brought the child home for the second time after nearly two weeks in hospitals. Three weeks later, he began to have seizures again, so he was returned to observation for another five weeks. A second MRI showed a blockage in the brain that caused the seizures, so at just 12 weeks old, William underwent brain surgery.

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“William is now 10 months old and he is a delight to both me and his dad. We're still processing everything we've been through. The emotions of grief sometimes just wash over me out of nowhere. But I just have to keep going,” says Deborah. “We must be strong for William, fight for him.” He’s the one who gets us through it all, even on the really hard days.”

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