This story was sent in by Sophie Ferguson, accounting the birth of her son James, who benefited from the amazing work done by the Special Care Baby Unit.
James Ferguson, our second son, was born on 22 March 2009 in Brook Ward of Ipswich hospital, arriving in a hurry – very nearly on the A14. We arrived at the hospital at 0915 and he was born at 0933 after an easy birth – good lad! Or so we thought. We were to go home the same day after a cup of tea but the midwife advised that because my waters had broken over 24 hours before, James and I should stay for observation to ensure James had not picked up an infection during birth. Sure enough by 9pm that night, James’ temperature had soared and his respirations were over 100 per minute (normal rate for an infant is between 30–50) – strong signs that indeed he had picked up an infection. He was rushed up to the Special Care Baby Unit. What followed was a terrifying couple of hours as our seemingly healthy baby was rushed into the care of the neonatal nurses and given intravenous antibiotics through a cannula and a lumber puncture to test for meningitis.
From the joy of an easy birth, James suddenly had a plastic tube into his arm and was having samples taken from his spine. It was a terrifying and dizzying turn of events. We never found the cause of the infection but slowly the signs of infection started to decrease as the antibiotics took hold and James went from strength to strength. He and I spent a week in the Special Care Baby Unit and we cannot fault the care we were given. The nurses were all fantastic at giving individual attention to all their patients and were brilliant dealing with distressed parents. The support we were given and first-rate clinical care made a very distressing time much more bearable and we are delighted to be able to support the Pedalo Challenge to help other parents and their babies get the essential care that is needed at such a fragile time in a baby’s life. Our experience turned out to be a relatively benign but seeing some of the other babies in incubators and having serious long-term care was sobering.
By Sophie Ferguson
The Pedalo Challenge 