Winnii the warrior was born a perfect beautiful baby girl, I remember staring at her little face and thinking how perfect she was, not a single blemish, just perfection.
Just 5 days after our precious little girl was born she was screaming like she was in pain, she wasn't poorly, just in pain.....like colic. It was a Sunday but my instinct told me I needed to take her to a+e. They saw us straight away, I said to the paediatrician "she's got colic".....they took her temperature and all of her observations were fine. She agreed she thought colic but wanted her registrar to give her a once over before we headed home.
I never forget that registrar (Dr. Fatima at Burton queens) she saved my babies' life! She didn't like the sound of Winnii's cry and wanted her to stay for a couple of hours to observe her....we headed to the ward, I didn't even feel worried. By the time we got to the ward it was time for her observations to be done again, she had spiked a temperature.....they were fast, they took her off me and explained that they needed to do a lumbar puncture and start her immediately on IV antibiotics. My world fell apart. How could this be happening??
The results came back as bacterial meningitis. How and why? I have 3 other children at home that need me too. After 2 days in hospital, the cultures came back and the bacteria she had was extremely rare, not normally seen in babies or children....CITROBACTOR. The professionals needed to research how to treat her, they didn't know much about it. Another 2 days after, they told me they needed to do an MRI of her brain because the rare bacteria can cause brain abscesses. I remember waiting for the results, the consultant called us into a little room and said I'm so sorry it's not good news, Winnii has a very large abscess on the front left lobe of her brain. We can't treat her here. We have to blue light you to Nottingham queens hospital right now....they have the best neurosurgeons and this little baby needs brain surgery.....right now!
We seemed to have sat in the ambulance for what felt like forever, we arrived, and the whole team were waiting for our precious baby girl. That night, she had brain surgery and a pic line fitted for her iv antibiotics. They said we needed 3 miracles....for her to survive the operation, no infection and the operation to be successful!! I am proud to say that we were granted all 3 miracles! We are very lucky, they give us her little footprints just incase, but there was no way she was going to stop fighting and let the worst happen. She stayed on iv antibiotics for 8 weeks....we lived in the hospital the whole time!! I will never forget the day we got to bring her home.... I will cherish it forever.
Winnii is 16 months old now, she is doing amazing! She is delayed developmentally, her speech is as a 1-month-old, and she has brain damage on the left and right front lobes resulting in epilepsy. She is on medication which is controlling the seizures unbelievably well. She really is a miracle! We have so many people to thank who saved her life, and we will never ever forget.