Babies given IV antibiotics after birth for possible sepsis

[Cocomandarin]

I would be interested to know if you had a baby between September and now that was treated with iv antibiotics as a precautionary for ‘possible sepsis’ or something else that turned out not to be anything. I’m reading more and more about this and babies also having reactive skin and issues with feeding. I’m by no means into conspiracy theories but I am curious as it doesn’t seem to be just the odd one. There are a lot. On the ward I was on when I had mine every single baby that was born via c section that day had iv antibiotics for some reason or another. I think it’s weird..

Are you worried that early antibiotics might have caused gastrointestinal and skin problems for your baby?

It definitely is the case that babies born by c section or vaginally have different gut microbiomes. However so do formula or breast milk fed babies. Toddlers who go to nursery develop richer microbiomes (which we assume is better, but we don't know for sure).

It's also the case that many c section babies need antibiotics, but that's often down to the reason that a c section is needed in the first place .

https://isappscience.org/a-pediatricians-perspective-on-c-section-births-and-the-gut-microbiome/

All of these differences matter a lot more at the population level than for an individual.

It sounds like you are your baby have had a tough beginning and things are still tough? You can't turn back the clock on the antibiotics, but your child will gradually acquire a richer microbiome from things like playing outside and eating a diverse, healthy diet when they are bigger.

I really wanted to avoid antibiotics for my child, then they caught cellulitis in their eye socket and there was a risk they could go blind. I said yes to the antibiotics.

@OtterMummy2024 thanks for your reply. She was affected from the antibiotics as she was very sleepy and had reflux instantly and didn’t gain weight over the first couple of weeks. My reason for concern is that I was told by a nurse that sometimes they are told to mass treat with antibiotics if there has been an outbreak of something in a hospital. They don’t have to disclose it. Every single baby that I know that was born around the same time has had issues with their skin such as eczema, cmpa, reflux etc. they treated my baby for low oxygen saturation but her oxygen was 99%. They told me this was too low and I’ve since learnt it isn’t. I would never refuse antibiotics if I was given adequate reasoning by a health professional. But it does worry me how much they are over treating new born babies

If you have questions about you or your babies treatment after the birth you can absolutely raise these with the hospital, I think either via PALS or perhaps it could come under the birth debrief? Someone more knowledgeable here will know or you could ask the hospital directly.

Regards to antibiotics, my son was admitted to NICU shortly after birth with a slow heart rate and low oxygen saturation. They immediately treated with antibiotics in case there was an infection, and periodically checked his bloods for infection markers and found nothing. I think it was right to pre-empt with antibiotics just in case as new babies can deteriorate so quickly so they were covering all the bases. There are ways to work on your babies gut microbiome so please don't worry about antibiotics have any terrible long term effects. Did they say the reflux and slow weight gain was due to the antibiotics? Because there are many possible reasons for this, which most often resolve over time.

Congratulations on your lovely new baby!

With all due respect, what medical background do you have? What is your level of medical knowledge?
You cannot claim they are over treating new born babies based on the information you have provided - with all due respect you clearly do not have the knowledge required to make that judgement. Is your understanding based on actual, proper, peer reviewed research and studies (easily enough found and in the public domain) or that you’ve seen a few cases in a very short space of time and you didn’t like it!?

My first baby had IV antibiotics 16 years ago but he didn't have any allergies or reflux.
Reflux and eczema are very common in new babies though regardless of antibiotics. Two of mine had baby eczema.

My first had antibiotics immediately after birth nearly 3 years ago because I had a slightly raised temperature (I had just been pushing for 2 hours after a 48 hour labour...) She has eczema but we're such an atopic family I would have been surprised if she didn't.

No.2 had antibiotics at 5 weeks after catching a very mild cough from no.1. Obviously a virus, but rational from drs was that babies deteriorate so quickly that it's important to begin treatment immediately just in case, even before waiting for test results. I wasn't especially happy about this, but they were acting in her best interests I guess...

My DS was born by C-section and didn't have antibiotics or any treatment other than a bit of suctioning at birth. He had eczema and reflux. My vaginal birth DD (no antibiotics either) had CMPA and reflux. They were both very sleepy due to mild jaundice. These are all very common newborn afflictions that most babies will have. Very unsurprising that all the babies around the same age (<6 months) you've encountered have them. Hopefully your DD will grow out of it soon.

Babies can go downhill fast, and can experience severe life changing side effects (blindness, deafness, brain injuries) as a result. Better to treat a potential infection quickly rather than trying to fight it once it's become a wildfire.

Hi OP, this happened to my child in UCLH. they told me their concerns about infection and i said no to antibiotics. they then really ramped up the pitch and led me to believe she was definitely suffering from an infection so of course i let her have them.

when i requested her medical records 6 months later i found out it was precautionary and all her blood results showed no signs of infection (“her infection markers are coming down!” they told me in hospital. they were never high, the bastards were lying).

my poor DD really suffered and ended up with severe eczema and multiple life threatening allergies. if i had trusted myself her whole life would be different. but of course they will always claim they were doing the right thing and that they had legitimate reasons for thinking she had sepsis, or that she may have ended up with allergies anyway (wrong - they require an environmental trigger).

for a long time i struggled with the guilt that i had only held my DD in my arms a matter of hours before i handed her over to strangers who caused her permanent harm.

just to add, i do think they genuinely believe my child might have had sepsis, but they were wrong and over cautious. they also lied about their reasons eg in their notes they said she was a small baby but they never told me that was part of their reasoning which is frustrating because we are a tiny family, so of course she was bloody well small.

My DD vomited a small amount of bile which was their main reason for suspecting infection.

Hi all thanks for your replies. Firstly I have to say I do not wear tin foil hats at all, I support the decisions made by the nhs to treat as a precaution etc for babies.

What my concern is, is that the precautionary treatment for sepsis is becoming a bit of a blanket method when health professionals are stretched, are unsure and mistakes are being made in observations, notes and hand overs. I watched it happen with my own eyes during handovers. My baby was in there a few days and from her first day to her last the hand overs were getting more and more vague and some nurses didn’t even know what they were observing her for at all.

as I mentioned in my first post, all the babies born via c section that day which were 4 were all treated for possible sepsis. That was the same doctor for all 4. My baby had iv antibiotics before she had her first mouthful of milk and I know it has made an effect. She wouldn’t drink properly and lost so much weight. She was then admitted more times for weight loss- which somehow turned into ‘treat for possible sepsis’ because they had to wait for the blood culture result. Then when she had a virus she had the same treatment, which I was fine with as she was a newborn with a high fever. This was all before she was 7 weeks old so 3 x iv antibiotics and never had an infection. Each time she had very bad diarrhoea and stopped drinking her milk.

I was constantly terrified. I was told 3 times she could be septic and had to wait 3 days for bloods to confirm not. Nurses even were told that she did have sepsis because of mix ups with hand overs so it was very hard and I felt like I was going crazy.

i’m so sorry. please give your baby daily probiotics and vitamin d.

you may want to stop going to the doctors too. they feel compelled to treat babies when worried mums show up, and understandably are risk averse because they don’t want a death on their hands. but in practice babies will nearly always be fine if they are held and cuddled throughout the night when ill.

ive been where you are now and it’s awful, but it does get better. be mindful of food sensitivities developing and if baby has eczema only use hypoallergenic cream on skin.

I almost died of severe sepsis giving birth so they gave my DD antibiotics immediately after birth...and rightly so. She’s nearly 7 now and has no allergies, asthma or skin conditions. However, whenever I take her anywhere for a medical issue, they always ask me if she was given antibiotics at birth...so there must be something about it.