Hayley's Story   — Brandyn Beuchert, NC, USA

On my due date (December 6th, 2006), my waters broke at 6:45 pm. I was in the hospital by 8pm. They finally took me to a labor and delivery room around 10pm. I was not in labor, so, they induced labor through pitocin. At 8:50am, I started to push, took a break for an hour, and then resumed pushing for 4 more hours. My daughter, Hayley, was not descending, so I had to get a c-section. Around 4pm, I was taken into the O.R. My daugher was born at 4:20 with apgar scores of 9, 9. About 2 days after the delivery, while I was still in the hospital, my pulse wasn't going down (it was still 124) and I started getting a fever. I was diagnosed with a uterine wall infection and pneumonia. The next day, my daughter started getting a fever. I knew something wasn't right to begin with, because she cried all the time and wasn't eating. It turned out Hayley had GBS in her blood. I had tested negative for it 2 weeks earlier. She was placed on IV antibiotics right away for 14 days. After about day 6, they put in a PICC line so she could come home and a home nurse could administer antibiotics. Her PICC line clotted after the first day. So, they put in a peripheral IV only to have it clot. They finally readmitted her and her IVs kept clotting. They finally sent her home after day 10. I'm still uncertain about how I could have tested negative and still had it. Nothing was really explained to me. The only thing I care about now is that Hayley is here and we have survived this nightmare.