OP, I look after babies like Stephen, and even with a whole team of people and all the equipment that an ITU has, we still struggle to save babies who have an overwhelming infection such as your boy seems to have had. Once these bugs take hold they can spread so quickly and I’ve seen babies go from looking a bit unwell to full cardiac arrest in under 6 hours. When an infection is overwhelming like this, you find the bacteria everywhere- brain, lungs, bowel, kidneys- and it is sometimes difficult to know where it started. Certainly sometimes these things seem to piggyback on a minor cold, possibly something that distracts the immune system and disrupts the normal barriers in the nose that stop bacteria from crossing into the bloodstream. Because the infection moves so fast, sometimes it doesn’t matter where it starts, you just have to treat it where you find it. Even then we are not always successful.
I’ve done CPR on lots of babies- sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, not because it was done badly, but because some babies are too sick to respond. It sounds as if you gave Stephen every chance you could have done- the infection was just too quick and too severe. I’m so sorry you lost him.
for you xxxx
