Matt and Laura’s story

Tell us about your pregnancy with Sam, Laura 

It was a complicated pregnancy towards the end. I had a high-risk complication which meant that Sam was delivered via c-section at 37 weeks. Before Sam was born, we’d had a miscarriage so we were really worried about him being okay. Thankfully he arrived healthy after a two week stay in hospital, though a little smaller, all was fine. 

There were a lot of people in the operating theatre with me because of the complications. Matt remembers a lot of people in hospital using their fingers to try and get Sam to breastfeed. We asked the midwives if it was normal that Sam’s eyes shut so often, and they’d explained it was very normal.

How was Sam when you got home, Laura? 

For the first few days, he was feeding fine and occasionally he opened his eyes. Sam is our first baby and we really didn’t know if this was normal or not. On his third day at home, he wouldn’t wake up or take milk. I was looking through Instagram and as I’d followed The Lullaby Trust for their safer sleep advice. I saw a video of a woman sharing her experience of her baby dying from an infection. It was সংক্রমণ প্রতিরোধ সপ্তাহ. She said her baby had a low temperature, and so Matt and I decided to check his temperature. When we discovered it was low, we called the midwife. 

The midwife contacted the hospital, who told us to drive to them for an appointment. We set off in the car, and I stayed in the back to check his breathing as instructed by the hospital. Eventually I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, so we stopped the car and called an ambulance.

What happened when you arrived in hospital, Matt? 

Sam was rushed from the ambulance into infant resuscitation, where they carried out initial checks and confirmed he was having breathing apneas (temporary pauses to breathing). From there he was warmed, given antibiotics, put on equipment help his breathing and taken to neonatal intensive care. Sam went straight into an incubator. Sam spent a week in intensive care, recovering with courses of antibiotics and tests to try and figure out what was had caused his apneas. He didn’t have any of the 10 main infections, but the team were sure he caught an infection or similar in hospital before leaving for home. 

How did it feel when you could both finally take Sam back home? 

Our experience was just a reminder about how vulnerable babies’ immune systems are during those early months. We had to slowly build up our confidence again, and we didn’t let many people around to meet Sam. Sam was three-months-old when we took him to a parent-and-baby group for the first time. 

Sam is just over one-year-old now. He is crawling and causing mayhem around the house, and trying to walk too. 

If it wasn’t for the awareness about infection from The Lullaby Trust, I don’t think I’d have taken his temperature. And you always worry about babies having high temperature too, so I didn’t even think about it being low. We both wonder if Laura hadn’t seen that Instagram post, whether Sam would be with us now. If sharing our experience today can save another baby, that means everything.