Baby Meningitis/herpes

[Alfee]

A friend's three-week onld baby is in the special care unit with suspected meningitis/herpes. He had a cluster of herpes on his head. Early Symptoms have been sleeping for 10 hours at a time and not waking for feeds, off his food and no crying at all. Does anyone recognise the symptoms/got any information to help the parents get through this worrying time?

Alfee as long as the medics are seriously considering meningitis (and herpes) its good news for the baby and it is definitely in the best place. It is when the possibility of meningitis is not considered that things usually go wrong. Sadly my 10 month old son died of meningitis earlier this year. We will always believe that this was because the 10 Dr's or so that we saw dod not spot any tell tale signs and and his condition was not treated with appropriate seriousness. i have met lots of people whose children have survived with no real long term effects because the condition was recognised early enough.

I really hope that everything goes well ...send them lots of best wishes and sympathy.

Mt son had herpes on his head when he was 4 months old. His older brother had chicken pox about 6 weeks earlier so it may have been that the two episodes were connected, just that the baby was too young to have caught full blown chcicken pox. All the GP's at the practice had never seen such a thing (it was clumps of raised angry looking bumps in patches in a straight line across his scalp) and referred us to the hospital which promptly put him in an isolation unit. When it was fianlly diagnosed as herpes, there was no medication to be given as it is a virus and we were sent home. He didn't seem distressed with it though and in a few weeks it went away. He is now 6 and has been exposed to chciken pox several time now, (with his younger brother getting it recently) and still not had it. The whole episode was very worrying at the time, but thankfully there were no lasting effects from it.

Thank you Bobbins and Lizbell. It looks as though it was meningitis, picked up early enough and little Toby is on the mend, albeit very slowly. Don't know what long term effects if any he may have suffered either. Can't imagine Bobbins what you must be going through, My thoughts are with you.