Seizures and Grade 3 bleed on brain - intraventricular haemorrhage

[LouisaM100]

Hi all,

I gave birth to a beautiful big boy at 37 weeks and 5 days old, spontaneous labour and delivery, 9.4lbs baby delivered vaginally...

He started having seizures around 24 hours after birth, changed colour and had to be rushed to Nicu. They found that he has a grade 3 bleed in the brain, meaning one of the ventricles is full of blood.

Doctors are baffled because he has no other signs of infection, everything else seems fine with him apart from the bleed. We were told this sort of thing doesn't happen to babies that are born at term.

I know he's not considered premature but I thought I will ask here because it's very common in premature babies.

Has anyone experienced this before? If so, how long did you spend in nicu?

As you can imagine my husband and I are very worried and overwhelmed with it all. I feel like I'm living a double life as we have 3 other young kids, aged 6,4 and 2 whom all keep asking where the new baby is and why he isn't home.

Hi OP, how are you doing? How is your baby? I’m a neonatal nurse. Obviously I don’t know details of your babies care so can’t answer any questions but just wanted to say hi and check in.

Hey, thanks for checking in.

We were discharged from nicu on the 18th of March. Baby is well apart from now having to take seizure medication twice a day and the blood in the brain that is yet to be resolved. We did a lumbar puncture prior to discharge, removing 30ml of fluid, some old blood came out with it which was a good thing apparently.

Yesterday we came in to a routine cranial ultrasound and unfortunately we were told his ventricles have enlarged dramatically causing more pressure on his brain and were admitted to high dependency unit the same day for another lumbar puncture to drain some fluid. This morning we were told he must have a shunt and will need to be taken to Great Ormond Street hospital ASAP to do the operation.

Its all very overwhelming especially when we had the hope that the old blood may resolve by itself but unfortunately it had other plans.

Do you know anything about the shunt? I assume it's a good thing long term instead of constantly doing lumbar punctures, right?

One of my sons had to have a shunt put in. It has worked beautifully, no problems at all, but he is still on anti-seizure meds. Otherwise normal. good luck to you!! It is extremely worrying, especially as he can't tell you himself what is going on.