If My Baby Get Ahold of Something That Has Honey in It What Do I Do

I'm not a germophobe by any means. I've always held the conventionalities that "a lilliputian dirt won't hurt" and after beingness a female parent for nearly 7 years, by and large, I find it to be true. That's why I don't worry as well much nigh elementary schoolhouse germs or my toddler son kissing the domestic dog. But when my first baby was an babe, our family unit was the ane-in-a-1000000, the rare instance of what happens when a piffling dirt does, in fact, hurt.

At eight weeks one-time my daughter developed an extraordinarily rare, yet curable status called infant botulism. It came from a microscopic spore in the soil and shut downwards her whole trunk from the inside-out. Older kids and adults can move the spores out of their bodies earlier they germinate and multiply, producing a toxin that interferes with the normal interaction between her muscles and nerves, but an infant's digestive system isn't mature enough.

It was the expressionless of winter when my husband and I brought our tiny, 5-pound, 11-ounce baby home from the hospital for the very beginning time. We were living on a subcontract in an older, run-down house in the Maryland countryside. We were a far weep from farmers, though, and for her first few weeks of her life at that place were piles of snow on the ground then high we barely left the house. The most outdoor time nosotros got that wintertime was when I bundled my infant upward, layer after layer, strapped her in the stroller, and pushed her upwards and down the long driveway.

I day, I took my daughter to the doctor's office to have her two-month vaccinations. She was perky and squirmy on the table—"a happy infant," the pediatrician told me. I think feeling proud of myself in that moment. I'd struggled to feel confident as a new mother, but she was "happy." The doctor had said information technology himself. Little by little, I was stepping into my new function and my daughter was thriving.

She slept in the auto, which wasn't suprising. But then she slept through our whole grocery shopping trip. She slept as I unpacked bags in the kitchen, and all afternoon. At first, I attributed her grogginess to the shots, and honestly, the long nap felt like a welcome relief to me as an exhausted new mother. Just shortly it became clear that something was very wrong.

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That night my girl woke to nurse every couple of hours. But when I put her to my breast, she fell off, sobbing. I couldn't get her to nurse. When we called the pediatrician, they simply said to go along an eye on her. By the adjacent mean solar day, she still couldn't seem to stay latched. And by that evening, her cry had turned into a low groan. Her limbs were noticeably floppy. She wasn't having moisture diapers. All she did was sleep.

Panic prepare in equally nosotros drove to the emergency room. Upon our arrival, she was hooked up to IV fluids, given every exam in the book. My husband and I laid on either side of her while she slept in the hospital bed. Sometimes we drifted in and out of sleep, or awoke to a doctor continuing over the bed with a clipboard, telling us, with a smile, that yet another test had come dorsum negative.

The next 24-hour interval, our baby lay in a crib with metal bars that had been brought into the room. She was pale and unable to motion. Her back was hobbling from top to bottom from a spinal tap that had been performed that morning. A nurse came in and asked me to try feeding her. I stared at her in disbelief. Could she not see that my infant was far as well weak to nurse? Were the doctors merely looking at exam results instead of our child, equally my husband and I sat in the hospital room watching her grow sicker and sicker?

I picked my infant up. Her arms hung limp. Her head flopped backwards. "I tin't feed this baby. Await at this infant!" I cried, first to sob for what felt like the 100th time. I had been trying to hold information technology together, just waiting for a shot or a pill or something that would turn my baby back into her old self. But now, I started to worry that it never would.

A while later, the medico came back in. Someone, an older nurse, had had an idea. She thought my daughter's condition might be babe botulism, a rare illness that wouldn't evidence upward on the dozens of tests that had been performed. An ambulance arrived to have us to a neighboring hospital that had a pediatric intensive care unit and would be able to better care for her.

That afternoon, doctors, nurses, and medical students in the P.I.C.U. hovered around her bed to take notes and marvel at "the botulism baby." And I cowered over a chest pump, barely able to breathe. Though it would be well-nigh a calendar week before they could confirm the diagnosis (done by testing my girl's stool one time she wasn't constipated anymore), the doctors were confident it was, in fact, infant botulism. An antitoxin, botulism immune globulin intravenous (BIGIV), was ordered from California to aid in her recovery, simply it would be hours before it could be flown in.

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The hours crept by as my husband and I lingered by her bed, stroking her now thin and motionless body. We had little to do simply exercise our ain research. We read everything we could virtually the condition. We found out that at that place were two main ways it could be contracted: through ingesting honey and inhaling soil particles. (Eating dwelling-canned food contaminated with the spores is some other possible source.) She hadn't had any honey so nosotros chalked it up to our farm-living, even though we'd hadn't even been out playing in the clay. Nosotros also learned that my daughter's constipation, something that had come up about over the by few days, hadn't been a variation of normal like I'd been told, but actually the beginning sign that her body was shutting downward.

All of her symptoms were "archetype botulism" according to the i nurse who had actually seen information technology a couple of times. And somehow, that was music to my ears. My biggest fright during our hospital stay was that something had been missed. What if it was something worse, something that couldn't exist cured? I thought of all the mothers who'd been in this same room before me. Mothers who hadn't gone home with their children. I clung to the belief that I wouldn't be i of them. Soon, equally my daughter got better, I knew I wouldn't exist. And so I knew what it was like to experience selfish and grateful at the aforementioned time.

While information technology'south a rare condition, knowing the symptoms of baby botulism—the inability to suck, the constipation, the floppiness—tin be lifesaving. I shudder to remember of what might've happened if we'd stayed home one more night, hoping the grogginess would wear off. But if I'd known more than, perhaps I would've been improve able to advocate for my child, to become a diagnosis sooner, and to dispel my fears that she'd never recover.

Afterwards ii weeks in the P.I.C.U. my daughter regained full mobility. I was never able to get her back to nursing, though I know some mothers who were successful. About 100 babies a year in the United States will develop infant botulism. It can bear upon babies up to age i, but is well-nigh common between three weeks and 6 months. Information technology's so rare most doctors will go their whole careers without ever seeing it. Only undeniably, to the parents who have watched their child suffer through information technology, it is heartbreaking. Still, baby botulism is highly treatable and babies diagnosed with the status are expected to have a full recovery.

sarah and piper infant botulism story

Credit: Sarah and her girl today

Since my daughter's hospital stay over six years ago, I've had to exercise my own healing. After returning home, I stayed up nighttime after night, unable to allow myself fall asleep. A psychiatrist later told me I had developed post-traumatic stress disorder from the experience. Luckily, my daughter has long been healed and she'll never remember beingness and so sick and and then helpless. The biggest scars, by far, were the ones left on my centre. But if at that place'south any silverish lining at all, it's that I found a deeper kind of gratitude, the kind you lot only larn when you come shut to losing someone.

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Source: https://www.parents.com/baby/health/other-issues/my-daughter-had-infant-botulism-what-you-should-know/

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