Strep B - How bad is it for mum and baby

[teamcullen]

MY DN is having her second baby and has been told she has strep B. Her first DC was absolutly fine, apart from a couple of days light therapy for jaundice.

Every time I speak to sil she goes on that everything is so bad, such as, baby will definatly have to go into ICU, baby could lose an arm during birth, nealy miscarried, nealy went into labour at 24 weeks.

I know sil is obviously worried, but I cant help thinking that she just hears the worse case sinario and then says that as fact.

I dont know much about strep B, but I did think that it was more dangerous if you didnt know about it. Can anybody please enlighten me to the real dangers and how common complications happen when it is known mum has strep b

Thankyou

[Northernlurker]

I don't know the stats but your sil is definately looking on the dark side here!

Strep B does pose risks to a baby's health, It may predispose to a premature labour or it may not - nobody can say. If the baby is early they may need special care and IV antibiotics could be required. That's true of lots of pregnancies though and nothing is definate at all. I don't know where she got the losing an arm bit - that's just mad! YOu can lose a limb with severe infections such as meningitis but that's veryh uncommon and certainly wouldn't happen during the birth. I think there's a strep b website - I'll have a look.

[Northernlurker]

this looks useful

this is the site I was thinking of

[butterscotch]

I think strep B is only dangerous if its not detected my understanding is if they know she has it they will give her antibiotics in labour maybe induce early after a course of antib's!
Worse case baby maybe given Anti-b's to ensure no infection crosses over!
She's lucky they know about it my hospital don't test for Strep A or B

[AitchTwoToTangOh]

she's talking rubbish, tbh. isn't it something like a third of us have strep b? they just give you anti-biotics during labour, that's all. and even without them the risks are very very low, like one in a thousand or something. it's serious for the baby if it gets strep b, but the chances, esp with the antibiotics, are incredibly low. they don't even swab for it any more at our hospital, tbh. i only found out i had it cos i was treated for something else.

is she usually a drama queen?

[teamcullen]

Thanks Northernlurker- I thorght Id seen something about treatment during labour, that must have been the IVs.

[teamcullen]

Yes she is a drama queen and I tend to not take too much attention. I had a text from sil the other day telling me DN had nearly gone into labour and had been in hospital. I didnt get back to her for two days but when I did she told me a big story of how the hospital were going to keep her in for 9 weeks on bed rest and then deliver baby 4 weeks early, baby would be in ICU over christmas.

I began to wonder if I should be taking her more serious, but obviously not. I will worry if anything happens and not before.

[AitchTwoToTangOh]

it's pretty manipulative, i think, tbh. making a big fuss about something so relatively minor (for example there's every chance that your dn had strep b with her first child) is imho a bit fookin' disrespectful to people who have had a genuinely worrying pregnancy. plus, tbh, you really don't want to go wishing problems on yourself.