Hailey Lalchand

I am 17 years of age. I live in a country in the Caribbean called Trinidad and Tobago. This was my experience with an infection called sepsis.

In March of 2013 I found out I was pregnant. For the entire nine months of my pregnancy, my baby was perfectly healthy – great heartbeats and everything. When I was five months pregnant, my boyfriend and I found out we were having a girl so then and there we named her “Hailey.” We were extremely happy because it was our first child. She was expected to be born on the 31st October 2013.

On the night of October 29th, I started to get labour pains, very strong and close apart. We were excited that the baby was coming so we rushed to the hospital.

On arriving to the hospital and after the doctors examine me, they said I was still in early labour and was only 2 cm., so I stayed the rest of night there.

On the morning of the 30th and after lots and lots of pain, the doctors examine me and they still said I was only 2cm. After about 1pm in the afternoon and there was no change, they decided to rupture membranes.

Just after they did that I started to get really high fever, which caused the baby heart rate to go up. (Sepsis and Pregnancy & Childbirth) About 9:30 pm, they induced labour. I had my baby through natural birth at 10:26 pm. The feeling of holding my child was overwhelming but my baby was born with a cold so they took her to the nursery for treatment. She was born 3.82kg.

Two days after Hailey was diagnosed with a blood infection. She was put on antibiotics. We never got to carry our baby home, so she stayed in the nursery for special care. On the evening of the 4th November, when I went to visit my baby, she was placed in intensive care unit (ICU) for neonatal. They said she was breathing too fast and also choked and turned blue while they were feeding her. I was outraged yet hurt and saddened.

Hailey was hooked up on machines and tubes, which made me heartbroken seeing her that way. I couldn’t even touch my child. The other day I went the doctors told me that she had sepsis, which is a rare disease.

On the 7th of November, I got a call in the night saying that my baby had started to deteriorate and starting to bleed from her lungs. I was totally broken and rushed to the hospital. They told me that they paralysed her lungs and they will soon heal because she was strong and full grown. On the morning of the 8th, as I usually visited my baby and went to hear about her improvement, I came to hear bad news. My baby had worsened. They said that she had a 50/50 chance of surviving.

They tried there best to save her. No prayers in world could save her. God wanted her more than us! At 1:05pm Hailey was pronounced dead. I was shattered.

Upon my baby death I did not know what sepsis was. I blamed everything and everyone for my baby’s death until I read about it and found out more. I question God every day why he did this to me but accepted the fact that God knows best! I hope my story has inspired someone somewhere to have courage and faith and even though I had my baby for only 9 days, those were the best 9 days of my life!

Source: by Samantha Ramkelawan (Hailey's mother)