A mum is urging others to be aware of the signs of sepsis after she contracted the life-threatening infection during birth and mistook her symptoms as “normal”.
When Olivia Gough, 29, started to feel faint after welcoming her daughter, Amy, she put it down to losing a lot of blood during labour. In the days after she was discharged rom hospital the faintness continued, but she also started feeling achy and experiencing flu-like symptoms.
It was only when her GP noted her blood pressure had dropped significantly, that the teacher, from Belfast, was told to go straight to the obstetrics emergency department in her local hospital.
There she was diagnosed with sepsis, caused because some of the placenta was still inside her.
Four years on from the terrifying experience Amy says she still suffers side effects of the sepsis and wants to encourage other mums to look out for signs they could be seriously ill after giving birth.
“I felt rough, but I didn’t think it was that serious,” she says. “I’m very lucky because I had no idea how ill I was, but I could have so easily lost my life.”
Olivia’s story
Other than experiencing severe morning sickness, Olivia describes her pregnancy as relatively typical. She gave birth to Amy at the Ulster Hospital, at 4:19am on January 13, 2020.
As Amy wasn’t breathing when she was born, doctors resuscitated her while Olivia’s doctors manually delivered her placenta.
“I was losing a lot of blood,” she recalls of the moments after her daughter’s birth. “It was all a bit of a blur and I don’t remember Amy being resuscitated, but when I woke up everything seemed fine.”
After two nights in hospital Olivia and her new baby were discharged and though she was still feeling faint, she assumed it was a normal side effect of childbirth and of losing a lot of blood. “I was home for exactly a week after Amy was born,” she says. “I’d mentioned to James that I was feeling quite unwell and he said I should ring the GP in the morning.”
After testing Olivia’s heart rate, blood pressure and temperature the GP told her she needed to go straight to hospital. “My temperature and resting heart rate were really high and my blood pressure was really low. By the time I arrived at the hospital I felt very faint and unwell, but I thought I was just really hungry. I could hear the doctor on the phone saying: ‘This lady has sepsis, come right now,’ but I didn’t even think they were talking about me.”
Over the next seven days, Olivia’s care team found that not all of her placenta had been removed from her body. She was given medication to break it down and as the placenta left her body, her infection markers began to drop. She says she feels “very lucky” she didn’t go into septic shock.
Olivia is now keen to raise awareness of postnatal sepsis as she believes the symptoms can be very easily missed by new mums. “If you don’t feel right, or feel faint, achy, flu-like symptoms, get checked, then get a second opinion,” she urges. A simple blood test can tell you whether or not you have an infection, but it’s important to catch it early.”
Additional reporting SWNS.
For more information and support with sepsis, visit Sepsis Research FEAT at https://sepsisresearch.org.uk/
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