This is a rant. You’ve been warned.
Antibiotics during labor is the standard protocol for GBS+ mothers. I was given them without my consent, without being informed, NOTHING was said to me until I began to have excrutiating pain in the arm with the IV. I was told I was being given fluids when in fact, they were antibiotics and I reacted violently to them.
GBS kills babies, and can make mothers very very sick as well. I’m asking questions though, because as I research this topic I am finding new literature that says antibiotics carry very real risks of their own. The greatest of these being that they render the babies who receive them in-utero virtually antibiotic resistant for the first few months of life to most Ecoli strains. Ecoli infections are rampant in hospitals, and babies born with compromised immune systems (having had their waters broken and hospital germs introduced to the before-then sterile uterine environment) at greatest risk.
Shouldn’t we be asking ourselves… our care providers… what else can be done? Because despite it being “standard protocol”, antibiotics do NOT catch all GBS infections. Cultures come back negative but the infant is diagnosed with GBS soon after birth. Antibitocs are given, just as protocol demands, yet babies contract GBS anyway and we lose them.
There is alot out there on this, albeit quietly… am I making a mistake by asking these questions? I was GBS+ for 3 pregnancies. Given the risks of antibitocs vs. the risk of a baby contracting GBS from me, should or WOULD I choose to have them administered?
I want to see the day when we CURE GBS in the MOTHER. So treating the baby is a non-issue. Someone tell me I’m not a lunatic for researching such a thing. Because from what I read (in peer-reviewed medical literature) antibiotics during labor are a shot in the dark. They reduce the risk but do not provide immunization for a baby from it. We should step back and be looking for a way to reduce the number of women who are GBS+… We need to understand better what it is, what it isn’t, and here’s a thought…
“WHAT CAUSES IT IN MOM’s IN THE FIRST PLACE???”
and
“HOW CAN WE CURE IT IN MOM’s SO THE BABY ISN’T EVEN AT RISK???”
To be angry at me for asking about treatment options when IV antibiotics can’t/won’t/shouldn’t be prescribed is sad. I’m no genius. I doubt I will answer these questions on my own. But I won’t stop asking them. And I won’t stop researching them.
“Standard protocol” is not good enough for me or my babies.
Dar a Luz Women's Care 