This heart-wrenching story is made bearable by the courage
of the mother it involves, who has taken her tragedy as a chance to educate others.
Ruth Schofield contacted the herpes simplex virus (HSV) for the first time when
she was in her final term of pregnancy. She was prescribed antibiotics for her
mouth ulcers, which were still present when she gave birth to baby Jennifer.
With no warnings to the contrary, Schofield naturally kissed
and cuddled her newborn baby. Soon after her birth, Jennifer stopped feeding
and seemed overly sleepy, so Schofield readmitted her to the hospital. Jennifer had no cold sores or outward signs of having contracted herpes, but the virus had spread throughout her organs, and she died when she was just a
few weeks old.
Doctors believe that herpes was deadly in this case because Schofield
had never been exposed to the virus until the very end of her pregnancy, so her
body didn’t have time to build up antibodies and pass them on to her daughter.
A few years after the loss of Jennifer—and 15 months after
the birth of her second child—Schofield has started campaigning to
raise awareness about the potential deadliness of HSV, which kills six babies a
year in the UK, where Schofield lives.
“There is not one single sign in a chemist's and nowhere on
leaflets does it say not to go near an end-term pregnant mother or newborn baby
[if you have HSV]," she says. I have to agree that there is far too little
awareness about this fatal, yet avoidable, situation.
Did you know that a cold sore could kill a baby?
Photo: parents.com
