A mother has opened up about the horror of watching her baby fight a life-threatening condition.
Sheena Harding, 35, of Bradley Stoke, gave birth to son Sebastian on December 9, 2018, at Southmead Hospital.
But Mrs Harding and her husband Daniel had their world turned upside down when Sebastian was diagnosed with Sepsis.
Mrs Harding said: “I will never forget the image of our poorly boy’s chest going up and down at 70 times a minute with oxygen saturations to match.”
Sepsis - which sees the body produce an overwhelming response to an infection - can lead to tissue damage, organ failure and death.
Thankfully Sebastian is in good health now, but Mrs Harding still gets emotional when looking back on his struggle.
The mother of two said: “At the time he [Sebastian] was in hospital for about a week and he is still under the scar management team.
“He was insulated and ventilated to start with and he was on facial ventilation and needed support for his blood sugar control and then monitoring for all his vital signs.”
A large scar remains on Sebastian’s ankle from where he kept losing the cannulas used to deliver antibiotics.
“If it were not for his scar you would not think there were any problems,” Mrs Harding said, adding: “It’s all just a blur - you kind of block it all out.”
Mrs Harding, herself a nurse at Southmead, though currently on maternity leave, said she was grateful to medical staff for their work.
“They were really good, keeping us up to date with everything going on, but as with every intensive care journey it was steps forward and steps back,” Mrs Harding said.
Now Mrs Harding and her husband have their sights set on running the Shepton Mallet 10k on October 27 to raise money for charities close to their heart.
Along with friends and family also taking part in the run, they hope to raise a total of £2,000 for Southmead’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the Bristol Paediatric Scar Management team.
So far £800 has been collected, prompting Mrs Harding to report she is “overwhelmed by people’s generosity”.
Every year there are 250,000 cases of Sepsis in the UK, with babies more at risk due to their vulnerable immune systems.
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