“Andy was only three weeks old.
He was a bit fussy the night before and wouldn't take his usual 11pm feed. He grumped all night but would not feed at all.
“By 9am he still hadn't taken any milk and was constantly crying. He just wouldn't settle. I thought he had trapped wind to start with. Then about 11am he started to feel hot, I tried to take his temperature and it read 38.9° so I knew something was much worse than just colic. I called NHS24 and they told me to take him to hospital. I managed to get my older three children looked after and headed down. We waited in A&E for an hour and a half before being seen.
Purple from the neck down
“When the triage nurse looked at him under his clothes she asked if he was normally this colour and that's when I saw he was purple from the neck down. Quickly she rushed us through to the children's ward where the room filled up with doctors and I was taken to the family room. My husband arrived just after this.
“We waited two hours. Twice a nurse came in saying the doctors are still working on him, I just didn't understand what they could be doing as he was so tiny. Finally a consultant came in and told us our boy was the sickest person in the hospital. The told us they needed to do a lumbar puncture but he was too sick, they'd have to wait. We eventually got him to tell us they suspected meningitis. It was as if the room caved in on me. It was horrendous.”
