Nia's Story   — Khatuna Gabitashvili, Tbilisi, Georgia

Nia Kajaia — Country of Georgia Delivered at 32-33 weeks on February 10, 2012 and died February 12, 2012 due to early onset GBS. It all began in the morning of an ordinary day, February 7, when I woke up to go to work. I noticed that my waters were broken and after the telephone conversation with my obstetrician I was advised to go to a hospital with NICU for preterm babies as I was on my 32nd-33rd week. Everything had been perfect before this day- no signs of infection or of GBS colonization; I even had my GBS test done 2 weeks before on my 30th week of pregnancy with a GBS negative result. Upon arrival at the hospital I was checked and baby still had enough amniotic waters to continue maturing in the womb; I was advised to stay at the hospital and see what was going to happen. Doctors had different thoughts about my situation; one thought that if labor had stopped itself it would have been better to send me home, the other said I might have had to get some medications to provoke delivery since he was afraid of infection. Anyway I was given IM antibiotics and hormone to make baby's lungs ready for breathing. Meanwhile they checked my GBS status by vaginal-rectal swab (test result required nearly 48hrs) and at that moment I tested positive, though no IV antibiotics were offered instead of IM antibiotics. Waters were stopped but I was still at the hospital when my pains started to occur (pains lasted for 7 hours). After many pushes (since this was my first delivery and also because I didn’t have excruciating pain) my baby girl – Nia was born early in the morning of February 10, she had lush cry and was given 7.7 Apgar scores, the nurses told me this was very good for a premature neonate and I felt relieved and so happy since she was our first child. I waited until morning to call my husband and tell him this happy news. She was taken to the unit for preterm babies as soon as she was born. She was fine for the next 5 hours, but then she started to have breathing problems and started to groan and refused to eat. The pediatricians said this latter was because her stomach was full of swollen amniotic waters. They did an X-ray and Nia’s lungs appeared whitish and the doctors concluded this was because of prematurity. Even then they didn’t think about pneumonia and GBS since the oxygen level was high in her blood, but they thought it better to take her to the NICU. That’s when I saw my baby girl first as before I couldn’t get up as my blood pressure was falling and I had painful stitches. She was all in tubes and cried a bit, but seemed to be fine moving her tiny hands around. I couldn’t visit her many times during the day since there were strictly determined visiting hours, but I was checking her health through asking the doctors. She seemed to be fine until the afternoon of February 11. When I entered the NICU and I saw all the doctors and nurses around her doing something with her, I nearly fell down. When I asked what was wrong I was told that she was losing the levels of oxygen and they needed to intubate her. They knew I tested GBS positive during labor, but they didn’t check Nia’s health in all aspects until she began to have breathing problems. Then they did a culture test of the waters swollen by Nia and the test was GBS positive, so there was no question she was infected. My husband and I, as all our relatives and friends, didn’t lose hope that she would get through this and we’d live happy together, but this never happened… Due to lack of oxygen in her tiny body sepsis developed. We gave her extra blood and my brother donated more in case she would need it again…but it was late…sepsis led to septic shock and when I went to see her again, full of hopes that she was feeling better, the doctor called us aside and I could see on her face that everything was wrong…Our precious girl died 2.5 days after her birth and left us with sorrows and so many ‘what if-s’…She went to be an angel and we’ll always have her in our hearts, loving and thinking of her constantly…We do not even have her picture since we didn’t think it would be over so fast and we didn’t want to take the pictures while she was in tubes… My husband and I try to tell everyone about this awful disease hoping that our story will encourage expectant mums to learn more about this infection and protect their babies, because if we’d known about GBS so much as we know at this moment and most importantly if vaccine had been there for us, our Nia could have been with us and we would have had a happy family. Nia, our little girl, we miss you and love you so much!!! Please forgive us not to be strong enough to protect you…